Quantitative evaluation of LED based optical autofocus module

Abstract

We report an improved version of the open-source optical autofocus module ("openAF") for light microscopy using a light emitting diode (LED), together with a method to independently quantify the performance of optical autofocus systems using 2D autocorrelation analysis of astigmatic imaging of fluorescent nanobeads. We apply the latter for both the LED-based and the previous super luminescent diode (SLD) based implementations of the openAF optical autofocus approach used in conjunction with a 100x 1.4 NA oil-immersion objective lens. The new approach accounts for power variations in the autofocus light source and we demonstrate that the convenient LED-based system can provide axial stability with a standard deviation <10 nm over at least 45 minutes when switched on from cold, during which the LED power varies as it reaches thermal equilibrium.