Junyan Liu

Super-aperture metrology: overcoming a fundamental limit in imaging smooth highly curved surfaces

The imaging of smooth, highly curved or tilted surfaces is widely recognized as one of the most challenging and unsolved problems in optical imaging and metrology today. The reason is that even when such surfaces are imaged using high aperture microscope objectives the steepness of the features causes the light to be reflected in such a way that it is not captured by the lens. This is true even in the limiting case of unity numerical aperture since the illuminating light may also be reflected in the forward direction. In order to overcome this fundamental problem we have developed a method whereby such specimens are covered with a readily removable organic fluorescent film thereby creating an isotropic scattering surface. We show that we are readily able to detect slopes with angles close 90° using a 0.75 NA objective – an 82% improvement over the theoretical aperture limit. Issues of variation in film thickness deposition are shown to be readily accommodated. This approach may be used with other fluorophore materials, organic or inorganic, since there is no need for biocompatibility in this application.

Digital differential confocal microscopy based on spatial shift transformation

Differential confocal microscopy is a particularly powerful surface profilometry technique in industrial metrology due to its high axial sensitivity and insensitivity to noise. However, the practical implementation of the technique requires the accurate positioning of point detectors in three‐dimensions. We describe a simple alternative based on spatial transformation of a through‐focus series of images obtained from a homemade beam scanning confocal microscope. This digital differential confocal microscopy approach is described and compared with the traditional Differential confocal microscopy approach. The ease of use of the digital differential confocal microscopy system is illustrated by performing measurements on a 3D standard specimen.

Three-dimensional optical transfer function in differential confocal microscopy.

To reveal the fundamental characteristics of differential confocal microscopy (DCM), its imaging properties were analysed by studying the 3D optical transfer function (OTF). The zero transfer at zero frequency along the axial direction in DCM, which has not been well understood and is considerably different from the transfer behaviour in conventional confocal microscopy (CM), was elucidated. The integral expressions of the OTFs for CM and DCM and the subsequent simulation results showed that DCMs have higher transfer capability than CM in the axial direction at medium and high frequencies. Conventionally, the relative optimal defocusing amount in DCMs are determined through calculations of the gradient of the point spread functions in the spatial domain. In contrast, in this study, the OTF performances were compared and the optimal defocusing amount was found to be between 5 and 7.

High-frequency heterodyne lock-in thermography (HeLIT): A highly sensitive method to detect early caries

In this letter, a nonlinear photothermal characteristic of dental tissues has been verified by photothermal radiometry at a given frequency with changing of the laser intensity. Subsequently, the high-frequency heterodyne lock-in thermography (HeLIT) scheme has been introduced to overcome shortages of the low infrared camera frame rate and the poor signal-noise ratio. The smooth surface tooth was artificially demineralized at a different time, and then it was detected by HeLIT, Results illustrated that the phase delay increases with the extension of the demineralized treatment time. The comparison experiments between HeLIT and the homodyne lock-in thermography for detecting artificial caries were carried out. Experimental results illustrated that the HeLIT has the merits of high sensitivity and specificity in detecting early caries.

Calculations of second harmonic generation with radially polarized excitations by elliptical mirror focusing: CALCULATIONS OF SECOND HARMONIC GENERATION

Second harmonic generation (SHG) polarization intensity distribution illuminated with radially polarized beams by lens focusing appears two peaks, when the nonlinear optical coefficients dominate that is relevant to the transverse electric field components. Such two peaks pattern may result in ghosting and the decrement of imaging resolution. In this paper, an elliptical mirror based system is proposed in the case of radially polarized beams illumination for SHG. The calculated predictions and numerical simulations demonstrate that for radially polarized beams, the proportion of transverse field components at the focal plane under the condition of elliptical mirror focusing is 2.6 times smaller than that with lens focusing when its numerical aperture (NA) is 1. Furthermore, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the total field intensity profile is approximately 81% of that in a lens focusing system. Due to the enhancement of longitudinal components of incident field, the distribution of SHG polarization presents a single‐peak pattern, in which two peaks can be observed with lens focusing. The SHG polarizations in collagen fiber, KTiOPO4, and LiNbO3 have been numerical simulated and discussed in detail to verify the validity of the proposed method.

The α-β circular scanning with large range and low noise

A circular‐route scanning method called α‐β circular scanning is proposed and realized using sinusoidal signals with a constant phase difference of π/2. Experiments show that the circular scanning range of α‐β circular scanning is 57% greater than the rectangular scanning range of raster scanning within an effective optical field of view. Moreover, the scanning speed is improved by 7.8% over raster scanning because the whole sine signal is utilized in α‐β circular scanning whereas the flyback area of the saw‐tooth signal needs to be discarded in raster scanning. The maximum scanning acceleration decreases by a factor of 44, drastically decreasing the high noise, which should considerably elongate the lifetime of the galvanometers while inhibiting internal vibration. The proposed α‐β circular scanning technique could be used in scanning imaging, optical tweezers and laser‐beam fabrication.

Research on lock-in thermography for aerospace materials of nondestructive test based on image sequence processing

IR Lock in thermography is an active thermography technology based on thermal wave signal processing, especially, it has many advantages for nondestructive test of composite materials and compound structure application and has been applied on aerospace, automotive, mechanics and electric fields. In lock in thermography, given sufficient time for periodic heating, the surface temperature will evolve periodically in a sinusoidal pattern form the transient state to the steady state. In this paper, the principle of lock in thermography is introduced and the heat transferring process is analyzed by the sinusoidal variation heating flow transferred in materials by means of FEM method. In experiment, the modulating optical stimulation is applied to sample, and image sequences are collected by Jade MWIR 550 FPA IR camera. The digital filter algorithm which is Savitzky-Golay digital smoothness filters is used to remove the effects of high frequency noise. A phase image at the frequency of periodic heating can be calculated using a Fourier transform of the periodic heating frequency in transient state for defect detection. The IR lock in thermography processing software is developed by using of visual C++ programmed based image sequence collected. The experimental results show that the developed system reached up to high level of conventional steady state Lock in method.

Design of Hybrid Refractive-Diffractive Objective with Super Wide Angle and Fast f-Number

To design a hybrid refractive-diffractive objective with super wide angle and fast fnumber, the interrelationship of the objective parameters was analyzed and an initial conventional spherical system was achieved to fulfill the fundamental performance, then its distortion was corrected by the aspheric surface depositing far from the optical pupil and one of doublets was replaced by hybrid refractive-diffractive lens to reduce the size of the system. Using ZEMAX software, the final visible band objective with 100° FOV and f-number 2.5 was obtained by only 6 elements with a smaller size about 35 mm×60 mm. Simulation shows that the MTF at 25 lp/mm is greater than 0.45 in the central field and 0.3 in the full field; the maximal distortion is less than 4%, much smaller than 35% of conventional system.