Wavefront sensing based on aperture masking for microscopy adaptive optics

Adaptive optics (AO) is a tool for correcting wavefront phase errors induced by the complex structures of biological samples, which cause significant image degradation. A novel wavefront sensing method based on aperture masking is proposed as a direct wavefront sensing method for microscopy AO, in which wavefront phases can be derived from images observed through several aperture masks. Experiments are conducted to verify the proposed method. The resulting wavefront phases are compared with those derived using a Shack–Hartmann sensor.