Imaging model of optical sectioning of thick specimen

Abstract

Based on the cartesian coordinate system, a coaxial couple cartesian coordinate system is designed whose z-axis is coaxial but z-axis coordinate is independent, and its xy plane is different but coordinate is the same. The object space and the image space are set in the two sub-cartesian coordinates respectively. In the coaxial couple cartesian coordinate system, according to the principle of optical imaging, a form of the optical microscope's imaging model of optical sectioning biological thick specimen is derived. The model form show that if a biological thick specimen is expressed as a pile of slices with tiny interval, and a slice among the slices is put in microscope's focal plane, then the thick specimen's image in image plane is the superposition of the focal plane image and all of the defocus images. In the model form, thick specimen's image is simply sorted into focal plane image and defocus image to make it easy to look insight, so the model clearly reflects the imaging relationship between the slice of thick specimen, and it is conducive to the analysis of the microscope's imaging characteristics for thick specimen. And the stack of optical section according to the model is equivalent to the mathematical model of three-dimensional imaging of thick specimen.