Image formation in low-coherence and confocal interference microscopes.

Image formation in the coherence probe microscope (CPM) and in optical coherence tomography (OCT) are compared. These systems differ in that CPM is a conventional interference microscope, but OCT is a confocal interference microscope. A major disadvantage of CPM for imaging through thick object structures is that there is no optical sectioning for the background image, which can saturate the detector. The behavior of the interference term in the presence of aberrations also exhibits some differences: Aberrations can be compensated in CPM, but not in OCT.