Feedback phase correction of Bessel beams in confocal line light-sheet microscopy: a simulation study

Confocal line detection has been shown to improve contrast in light-sheet-based microscopy especially when illuminating the sample by Bessel beams. Besides their self-reconstructing capability, the stability in propagation direction of Bessel beams allows to block the unwanted emission light from the Bessel beam's ring system. However, due to phase aberrations induced especially at the border of the specimen, Bessel beams may not propagate along lines parallel to the slit detector. Here we present a concept of how to correct the phase of each incident Bessel beam such that the efficiency of confocal line detection is improved by up to 200%-300%. The applicability of the method is verified by the results obtained from numerical simulations based on the beam propagation method. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America