Digital twin for 3D confocal microscopy, 3D through focus microscopy and confocal Fourier microscopy

We apply a digital twin for microscopy capable of simulating the image formation in confocal microscopy, through focus microscopy and the back focal plane formation of Fourier microscopy. The light-surface interaction is simulated using the Fourier modal method, and the microscope modeling is done using vectorial Fourier optics. The microscope modeling is done for ideal optical components but can be extended to non-ideal optical components. The model provides high accuracy and advantages with respect to computational effort as a full 3D model is applied to 2D structures and the lateral scanning process of the microscope is considered without repeating the time-consuming rigorous simulation of the scattering process. Finally, we discuss how we may improve optical measurements using a digital twin. In particular we discuss how the combination of imaging and non-imaging technologies in through focus microscopy makes it useable for characterizing both periodic and non-periodic structures.