Fraunhofer offers adaptive optics kit

Originally developed for astronomy, adaptive-optics techniques can be used for imaging through biological tissue in optical microscopy or for any kind of object recognition in machine vision. Fraunhofer IPMS (Dresden, Germany; www.ipms.fraunhofer.de) has developed a complete MEMS phase former kit for adaptive optics. The key component is a high-resolution MEMS micromirror array of 240 × 200 piston-type mirror elements with 40-μm pixel size providing 400-nm stroke at 8-bit resolution. Full user programmability and control are established by driver software.

An IEEE 1394a FireWire interface with an electronic driving board allows for maximum frame rates up to 500 Hz. To visualize the potential for optical imaging enhancement, a complete demonstrator system contains a projection system in which objects of different complexity are imaged through adaptive optics onto a CCD camera. Phase errors are introduced by rotating phase plates. Using a Shack-Hartmann sensor and the MEMS micromirror for wavefront sensing and correction, respectively, the obtainable imaging improvement can be assessed by means of the recorded CCD picture, which is also projected onto a large screen.