Non-mechanically-axial-scanning confocal microscope using adaptive mirror switching.

A non-axial-scanning confocal microscope employing a monochromatic light source has been developed. The system controls the defocus of an objective into three to .ve optimized states by using a membrane-adaptive mirror, and determines the axial height of an object according to the confocal output value with each defocus. A genetic algorithm is employed to optimize the adaptive mirror shape, with the information entropy of the spectrum of the lateral confocal spot pro.le used as a cost function in the genetic algorithm. Our experimental system successfully determined axial object height within 50 microm range with 0.64 % of error.