Imaging of spheres and surface profiling by confocal microscopy

An investigation of the imaging of spheres can aid in understanding details of the surface profiling method of confocal microscopy. The use of semicir cular masks to eliminate artifacts in confocal profiling is investigated ex perimentally. A theoretical treatment of image formation for a spherical ob ject in reflection confocal microscopy is presented. For large spheres a si mple approximate theory is described and is shown to be equivalent to appli cation of the Kirchhoff theory for surface scattering; (C) 2000 Optical Soc iety of America OCIS codes: 180.0180, 180.1790, 170.6900, 120.6660.