Differential high-speed digital micromirror device based fluorescence speckle confocal microscopy

We report a differential fluorescence speckle confocal microscope that acquires an image in a fraction of a second by exploiting the very high frame rate of modern digital micromirror devices (DMDs). The DMD projects a sequence of predefined binary speckle patterns to the sample and modulates the intensity of the returning fluorescent light simultaneously. The fluorescent light reflecting from the DMD's 'on' and 'off' pixels is modulated by correlated speckle and anticorrelated speckle, respectively, to form two images on two CCD cameras in parallel. The sum of the two images recovers a widefield image, but their difference gives a near-confocal image in real time. Experimental results for both low and high numerical apertures are shown. [c] 2010 Optical Society of America OCIS codes: 180.1790, 180.2520, 110.2990, 030.6140, 230.4685.