title: Axial apodization in 4Pi-confocal microscopy by annular binary filters.
abstract: We present a novel technique for considerably decreasing the sidelobe height of the axial point-spread function of one-photon 4Pi-confocal microscopes. By means of a numerical example, in which the ratio between the excitation and the fluorescence wavelengths was set to epsilon = lambdaexc/lambdadet = 0.8, we show that simply inserting a pair of properly designed two-ring binary masks in the illumination set allows the height of the axial sidelobes to be reduced from 20% to 5% of the height of the central peak. This allows one to receive the full benefit of the strong narrowness of the central lobe provided by the 4Pi-confocal technique.
authors.affiliation: Departamento de Optica, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot, Spain. manuel.martinez@uv.es
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martińez-Corral
authors.forename: Amparo
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pons
authors.forename: María-Teresa
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Caballero