Reflective objectives (ROs) mitigate chromatic aberration across a broad wavelength range. Yet, a systematic performance characterisation of ROs has not been done. In this paper, we compare the performance of… Click to show full abstract
Reflective objectives (ROs) mitigate chromatic aberration across a broad wavelength range. Yet, a systematic performance characterisation of ROs has not been done. In this paper, we compare the performance of a 0.5 numerical‐aperture (NA) reflective objective (RO) with a 0.55 NA standard glass objective (SO), using two‐photon fluorescence (TPF) and second‐harmonic generation (SHG). For experiments spanning ∼1 octave in the visible and NIR wavelengths, the SO leads to defocusing errors of 25–40% for TPF images of subdiffraction fluorescent beads and 10–12% for SHG images of collagen fibres. The corresponding error for the RO is ∼4% for both imaging modalities. This work emphasises the potential utility of ROs for multimodal multiphoton microscopy applications.
               
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