Laser confocal microscope with wavelet-profiled point spread function

We report a laser-scanning confocal reflectance microscope with a wavelet-profiled point spread function (PSF) for rapid multi-resolution extraction and analysis of microscopic object features. The PSF is generated via holography by encoding a pi-phase shifting disk unto a collimated laser beam via a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) that is positioned at the pupil plane of the focusing objective lens. Scaling of the transverse PSF distribution is achieved by selecting a suitable ratio of the pi-phase shifting disk radius and the pupil aperture radius. With one and the same objective lens and one SLM to control the phase profile of the pupil function, we produce amplitude PSF distributions that are accurate scaled representations of the circularly-symmetric Mexican hat mother wavelet. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.