Optical design used in Z-stack imaging based on liquid lens

Z-stack imaging system drives microscope to scan one image plane, changes the depth of the focus, and then scans another plane, last gets the data of examination sample. The curvature of liquid lens can be changed according to changes in the characteristics of voltage. It leads to achieve miniaturization and simply structure of focus imaging system. This article uses CODE V to design a microscope objective which employs an Arctic 416 liquid lens. It proposes architecture of 5 groups of lens with 40× microscope objective lens, 0.65 numeral aperture and 0.52° field of view (FOV). By CODE V automatic design, the microscope objective lens achieves a continuous focus adjusting up to 120μm depth. And then a better FOV MTF value with the same continuous focus range can be obtained by reducing one of lens group. Lastly, by replacing the high performance material of glass, the FOV achieves higher MTF and the continuous focus range increases to 130μm.