Optical sectioning in reciprocal fiber-optic based chromatic confocal microscope

Abstract A theoretical analysis for studying the optical sectioning in a chromatic confocal microscope employing the same single mode fiber for illumination and detection is described. The confocality achieved by different wavelengths due to the fixed size of the fiber core is investigated using diffraction theory. The detected signal level for the different wavelengths is also calculated. The ratio of the numerical aperture of the lens and the fiber is found to play a strong role in the performance of the system.