Modeling of High-NA Imaging Systems for Single-Molecule Microscopy
With the advent of new technologies in the areas of biology and chemistry, the need for more precise microscopes has steadily increased. For that reason, single-molecule microscopes, which allow for the observation of an individual fluorescent molecule, have been developed. With the fast physical optics modeling and design software VirtualLab Fusion, we can model the quite complex high-NA microscope systems commonly used for single-molecule imaging, including all physical-optics effects (most relevant in this case are those caused by diffraction). We have selected as examples to illustrate this topic a compact 0.99 NA reflective microscope, and another one based on Fourier microscopy.
Reflecting Microscope System with very high Numerical Aperture
This use case demonstrates the modeling a compact reflective microscope system with a very high numerical aperture of 0.99 using VirtualLab Fusion’s fast physical optics technology.
Single-Molecule Imaging with High-NA Fourier Microscope
We model a complete high-NA Fourier microscopy system for single-molecule imaging. Exemplarily, we show the effect of e.g. Fresnel losses at interfaces, diffraction from apertures, and compare the simulation results to a reference.
