Multi-dimensional Imaging

Chapter 7Programmable Microscopy

Tobias Haist¹, Malte Hasler¹, Wolfang Osten¹ and Michal Baranek²

¹Institute für Technische Optik, Universität Stuttgart, Germany

²Department of Optics, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic

7.1 Introduction

Today, a huge number of imaging methods for the investigation of microscopic specimens are available and most of these methods have some parameters that will strongly affect imaging. For microscope users, it is–at least most of the time–impossible to chose the perfect combination for the imaging task at hand.

Programmable microscopy is a technique that allows one to easily switch at high speed between these different imaging methods. If we denote the imaging method by and its parameters by “optimized imaging” means that the overall set of parameters leads to the “best” suited image to a given task.

In a multi-image context we can use multiple images obtained with different parameters in order to find a good, or even perfect, imaging result. Moreover, we might use the images obtained with different parameters in order to generate one optimized ...