A confocal microscope with programmable aperture arrays by polymer-dispersed liquid crystal

A programmable array microscope (PAM) is one kind of confocal microscopes which uses the spatial light modulator (SLM) to serve both the source and detection aperture as the scanning apertures. Usually, PAM uses the digital micromirror device (DMD) or liquid crystal based optical components (like LCOS) as the spatial light modulator. The latter one has no mechanical movement part in the system, but it needs polarizers, and it will reduce the light utilization rate. We present a programmable array microscope (PAM) which uses the polymer-dispersed liquid crystal (PDLC) chip as the spatial light modulator. PDLC is a polarization-free material, so we can improve the light utilization rate twice as other liquid crystal based PAMs. Furthermore, in our system, the incident light is perpendicular to the PDLC chip unlike other systems. Therefore, our system will make the whole system more compact. Also, it can increase the dynamic range compare to other liquid crystal based PAMs.