RAMAN IMAGING USING A TUNABLE DUAL-STAGE LIQUID-CRYSTAL FABRY-PEROT-INTERFEROMETER

A 11-12 cm(-1) bandpass electronically tunable liquid crystal dual-sta ge Fabry-Perot filter (DFPF) has been developed for use in Raman and f luorescence microscopic imaging. The imaging performance of the filter was demonstrated in the fluorescence and Raman modes. In the fluoresc ence mode, the filter was shown to give sharpened images using the nea rest-neighbors deblurring algorithm. In the Raman imaging mode, backgr ound subtraction was shown to be useful for removal of the fluorescenc e from Raman images. With the use of a 100 x /1.25 objective, no signi ficant decrease in the spatial resolution of the microscope was observ ed when the DFPF was inserted in the optical system.