Scene-based wavefront correction with spatial light modulators

Spatial light modulators (SLM) are used in different microscopy setups. Examples are optical tweezers, programmable phase contrast imaging, confocal imaging, and aberration correction. We report on a method that measures and corrects specimen-induced aberrations in wide-field microscopy without additional optical components (e.g. Shack-Hartmann sensors) by taking advantage of the SLM that is already used in the setup. Different local gratings are written into the SLM which is positioned in a plane conjugate to the pupil of the imaging system. Multiple images are recorded and based on the shift of subimages we deduce the wavefront. We demonstrate first experimental results of this method for a system using a high resolution LCoS modulator.