VECTORIAL PUPIL FUNCTIONS AND VECTORIAL TRANSFER-FUNCTIONS

The concept of the vectorial form of the pupil function in high apertu re imaging is introduced. Both two-and three-dimensional imaging are c onsidered. This leads further to the concept of a vectorial optical tr ansfer function (OTF), which can be used to describe imaging in two or three dimensions in high aperture systems. In this paper the full vec torial OTF is calculated for a 0.95 numerical aperture (NA) system and is shown to be significantly different from the scalar OTF The most s urprising difference is the occurrence of negative values at certain s patial frequencies. The fast and accurate calculation of vectorial OTF for 2-D imaging is achieved using the Fast Fourier transforms found i n conventional image processing software.