Confocal fluorescence microscopy with high-NA diffractive lens arrays

Traditionally, there is a trade-off between the numerical aperture and field of view for a microscope objective. Diffractive lens arrays (DLAs) with overlapping apertures are used to overcome such a problem. A spot array with an NA up to 0.83 and a pitch of 75 µm is produced by the proposed DLA at a wavelength of 488 nm. By measurement of the fluorescence beads, the DLA-based confocal setup shows the capability of high-resolution measurement over an area of 3mm×3mm with a 2.5×0.07NA objective. Further, the proposed fluorescence microscope is insensitive to optical aberrations, which has been demonstrated by imaging with a simple doublet lens.