Full-field interferometric confocal microscopy using a VCSEL array

We present an interferometric confocal microscope using an array of 1200 vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) coupled to a multimode fiber. Spatial coherence gating provides similar to 18,000 continuous virtual pinholes, allowing an entire en face plane to be imaged in a snapshot. This approach maintains the same optical sectioning as a scanning confocal microscope without moving parts, while the high power of the VCSEL array (similar to 5 mW per laser) enables high-speed image acquisition with integration times as short as 100 mu s. Interferometric detection also recovers the phase of the image, enabling quantitative phase measurements and improving the contrast when imaging phase objects. (C) 2014 Optical Society of America