High-NA Microscopy Systems with Inclusion of Gratings

Gratings, as test samples or as components of systems in their own right, can be applied in microscopy. For example, Ernst Abbe famously used a grating as the sample to investigate the resolution of a microscopy system. The magnified image of the grating is obtained at the image plane. Another example is that of Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM), which uses the demagnified image of the grating at the focal plane for illuminating the fluorescent samples [R. Heintzmann and C. Cremer, SPIE, 1999]. VirtualLab Fusion provides a straightforward way to model such systems in a fully vectorial manner. We demonstrate by applying different commercial microscopy lenses (Nikon) combined with gratings in VirtualLab Fusion.