No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 July 2020
DELTASCAN is a new light microscopy imaging system developed and built in the Department of Physics, Oxford, UK. [1] It is able to separate out the contrast seen in a ‘cross-polars’ image into three components, | sin δ | (a function of the optical retardation), φ (the orientation of a section of the optical indicatrix) and Io (the transmittance). These three variables are plotted as separate coded colour images. With the present computer and apparatus the data is collected, processed and the images simultaneously drawn in approximately 40 seconds.
DELTASCAN has an optical setup [2] based around a polarising microscope (Figure 5). The intensity through this optical setup can be shown to have the form:
I = Io[1 + sin2(ωt−ϕ)sin δ] (1)
where ω = frequency of the analyser, φ = orientation of cross section of the indicatrix and, δ = relative retardation which is related to a samples birefringence by δ = 2πΔnL/λ.