Development of a low-cost SOM laboratory prototype with lineillumination: Evaluation of deconvolution techniques on its axial resolution

The aim of this work is to establish a laboratory system, that embraces different areas such as optics, electronics, signal processing and software, to make possible the application of a linear sensor as detector in a scanning optical microscope (SOM) and to evaluate the application of different signal processing techniques on axial and lateral resolution. Thus a low-cost SOM laboratory prototype with reflection epi-illuminated configuration was assembled and a stage scanning type was selected to minimize the aberrations because low-cost optical components were employed. The line illumination was achieved using a low-cost anamorphic optical lens. In this paper a discription of the optical arrangement is presented. Also the acquisition system is reported regarding the circuitry developed with a microcontroller from PIC family to readout data from a linear sensor. A brief discription of the acquisition and visualization software running in microcontroller and personal computer (PC), respectively, is also included. The preliminary results presented in this paper were attained using plane mirror object mounted in a translation stage. A Matlab program was developed to implement different routines to estimate the axial resolution and evaluate its validity for the achievement of better depth discrimination.