Three-dimensional (3-D) imaging is demonstrated using an electronically controlled liquid crystal (LC) optical lens to accomplish a no-moving-parts depth-section scanning in a modified commercial 3-D confocal microscope. Specifically, 3-D views of a standard CDC blood vessel (enclosed in a glass slide) have been obtained using the modified confocal microscope operating at the red 633-nm laser wavelength. The image sizes over a 25-µm axial scan depth were 50×50 µm and 80×80 µm, using 60× and 20× micro-objectives, respectively. The transverse motion step was 0.1 µm for the 60× data and 0.2 µm for the 20× data. As a first-step comparison, image processing of the standard and LC electronic-lens microscope images indicates correlation values between 0.81 and 0.91. The proposed microscopy system within aberration limits has the potential to eliminate the mechanical forces due to sample or objective motion that can distort the original sample structure and lead to imaging errors.
To the best of our knowledge, for the first time, biological Three Dimensional (3-D) imaging has been achieved using an electronically controlled optical lens to accomplish no-moving parts depth section scanning in a modified commercial 3-D confocal microscope. Specifically, full 3-D views of a standard CDC blood vessel (enclosed in a glass slide) have been obtained using the modified confocal microscope operating at the red 633 nm laser wavelength.
Recent work in plasmon nanophotonics has shown the successful fabrication of surface plasmon (SP) based optical elements such as waveguides, splitters, and multimode interference devices. These elements enable the development of plasmonic integrated circuits. An important challenge lies in the coupling of conventional far-field optics to such nanoscale optical circuits. To address this coupling issue, we have designed structures that employ local resonances for far-field excitation of SPs. The proposed coupler structure consists of an array of ellipsoidal silver nanoparticles embedded in SiO2 and placed close to a silver surface. To study the performance of the coupler we have performed simulations using the Finite Integration Technique. Our simulations show that normal incidence illumination at a free-space wavelength of 676 nm leads to the resonant excitation of SP oscillations in the Ag nanoparticles, accompanied by coherent near-field excitation of propagating SPs on the Ag film. The excitation efficiency can by maximized by tuning the aspect ratio of the nanoparticles, showing optimum coupling at an aspect ratio of 3.0 with the long axis (75 nm) along the polarization of the excitation signal. We discuss the origin of these observations.
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