Abstract

An optical phase-contrast microscope¹ converts the phase variation of light modulated by the refractive index variation of a sample into an intensity image For transparent biological samples, this microscope is in particular useful because it can visualize the sample structure without dye staining but as the sample are alive. However, if the sample has an absorption distribution in space, the image observed with a phase-contrast microscope no longer represents the refractive-index variation of the sample. The image generated by the absorption distribution overlaps the phase-contrast image.

© 1992 Optical Society of America