| Summary: | <p>Many of the recent innovations in biological imaging have revolved
around the quest for greater resolving power, ultimately culminating
in the advent of super-resolution microscopy techniques. However,
all microscopy techniques are vulnerable to optical aberrations which
distort the light wavefront. This leads to a gulf between theoretical
and practical resolution for an imaging system. For super-resolution
techniques, this can lead to reconstruction artifacts or the failure of the
imaging technique entirely.</p>
<p>Implementing adaptive optics (AO) in microscopy has already been
shown to be highly effective at reducing these aberrations and yielding
significant improvements to image quality and resolution in numerous
proof of principle systems. Despite this, AO technology has yet to
be widely adopted in microscopy. This is for two principle reasons.
Firstly, AO implementations to date have not been robust or generalised
which makes transferring them between microscopy systems, imaging
modalities and sample type troublesome to impossible. Secondly, AO
implementations to date have not been accessible to typical microscope
users and instead have been the purview of AO microscopy specialists.</p>
<p>This thesis presents a generalised, robust implementation for AO;
Microscope-AOtools. This implementation has all the necessary methods
for setting up and operating an adaptive element in microscopy. It
has a flexible, modular design which allows for easy transfer between
imaging systems, modalities, hardware configurations and sample
types. These methods are integrated into Microscope-Cockpit for user
accessibility. The evidence of these claims are substantiated by a detailed
description of Microscope-AOtools’ successful deployment on
both a spinning disk confocal system and a bespoke, upright structured
illumination microscope with a range of sample types.</p>
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