Development of a realistic wave propagation-based chromatic confocal microscopy model

A model describing the signal generation in chromatic confocal imaging is presented here. It can be used to understand the signal development process accounting for wave-optical phenomena using scalar wave theory. The influence of the optics in terms of aberrations, the specimen in terms of roughness and further parameters on the signal generation process will be investigated. Moreover, the possibility to adapt the model to investigate other spectral imaging systems, such as chromatic confocal spectral interferometry will also be shown.