Spherical aberration correction of adaptive lenses

Deformable mirrors are the standard adaptive optical elements for aberration correction in confocal microscopy. Their usage leads to increased contrast and resolution. However, these improvements are achieved at the cost of bulky optical setups. Since spherical aberrations are the dominating aberrations in confocal microscopy, it is not required to employ all degrees of freedom commonly offered by deformable mirrors. In this contribution, we present an alternative approach for aberration correction in confocal microscopy based on a novel adaptive lens with two degrees of freedom. These lenses enable both axial scanning and aberration correction, keeping the setup simple and compact. Using digital holography, we characterize the tuning range of the focal length and the spherical aberration correction ability of the adaptive lens. The operation at fixed trajectories in terms of focal length and spherical aberrations is demonstrated and investigated in terms of reproducibility. First results indicate that such adaptive lenses are a promising approach towards high-resolution, high-speed three-dimensional microscopy.