Sensorless and sensor based adaptive optics for light sheet microscopy

Abstract

Light Sheet Microscopy has developed rapidly over the past decade and is the ideal approach for imaging model organisms such as zebrafish and other thick tissue specimens. Despite the superior optical sectioning capability, high imaging speed, and large field of view, the performance of light sheet microscopy still suffers from optical aberrations. We have implemented a scene-based Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor for directly measuring the optical aberrations on the emission side of the light-sheet microscope. In this work, we show that our system is capable of AO correction using sensor based and sensorless based approaches. We demonstrate correction up-to one hundred microns deep in zebrafish and fruitfly embryos.