Bilateral fitting subtracting confocal microscopy

This paper proposes a bilateral fitting subtracting confocal microscopy (BFSCM) based on the optical arrangement of conventional confocal microscopy (CM). BFSCM first uses the data in both sides of a confocal axial response curve, which are very sensitive to the axial position of the sample, for respective linear fitting to obtain two fitting straight lines, and then obtains a difference confocal line by subtraction of the two fitting lines. Finally, it calculates the zero position of the difference confocal line to precisely capture the focus position of the confocal system, and thereby achieving a high-precision measurement of the 3D structure of the sample. The theoretical analyses and experiments indicate that BFSCM can improve the axial resolution, and has anti-interference capability and focusing ability with bipolar absolute zero point tracking, while it does not change the structure and lateral resolution of CM. BFSCM provides a novel method for the improvement of CM axial resolution.