Chromatic Confocal Tomography

TL;DR

This paper introduces a chromatic confocal tomography system with an extended imaging range of up to 18 mm, significantly surpassing traditional systems, enabling faster and deeper 3D imaging for biological and industrial applications.

Contribution

The work demonstrates a novel chromatic confocal system using a single zinc selenide lens that achieves centimeter-scale imaging range, a two-order-of-magnitude improvement over existing methods.

Findings

Achieved 18 mm imaging range with high resolution

Demonstrated system suitability for biological and industrial samples

Extended confocal imaging capabilities to centimeter scale

Abstract

Confocal microscopy is the backbone of cellular research labs across the world but unfortunately, the imaging is restricted to a single plane. Chromatic confocal microscopy offers the possibility to image multiple planes simultaneously thus providing a manifold increase in the imaging speed whereas eliminating the need for z-axis scanning. Standard chromatic confocal systems have a limited imaging range of the order of a few hundreds of micrometers which limits their applications. In this work, using a single zinc selenide lens, we demonstrate a chromatic confocal tomography system that has an imaging range of 18 mm with an average lateral resolution of 2.46 microns and another system with a 1.55 mm imaging range with 0.86 microns average lateral resolution. Doing so, we have pushed the imaging range of chromatic confocal systems from micrometer to centimeter regime, an improvement of approximately two orders of magnitude. The proposed approach can be a powerful tool for confocal imaging of biological samples or surface profiling of industrial samples.