Experimental study of moire method in laser scanning confocal microscopy

By integrating moire method with laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), a novel class of moire patterns, i.e., LSCM moire patterns, is presented and investigated by experiment in this article. The moire patterns are formed by the interference of a 1200 line/mm cross-line holographic grating and the scanning lines of LSCM. The principles and conditions of forming LSCM moire are described in detail. The measured parameters of moire fringes from experimental images agree well with theoretical analysis. The experimental results verify the feasibility and reality of the proposed moire method to be another effective and high accuracy technique for measuring and observing in-plane microdeformation at micrometer scale. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.