Course at glance
There have recently been great advances in instruments and techniques for microscopy,  especially for biological and medical research and diagnostics. The course reviews the basic optical  and  imaging  principles  that  form  the  basis  of  modern  microscopy. Different microscopy modalities are introduced, including those based on fluorescence, and also label- free methods based on phase, polarization or non-linear optical properties.

Instructor
Colin Sheppard   colin.sheppard@iit.it
Tel: +39 010 71 781 804
Nanophysics, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia

Credits:  3


Synopsis
This course introduces the optics necessary to investigate the common properties of imaging  systems, including the physical principles, hardware and algorithms. Applications in the biomedical area are stressed, but other applications range from remote sensing, geophysical imaging, nondestructive testing and machine vision.

Syllabus  
The Course develops in about 9 hours in the classroom.  Diffraction and focusing; effects of numerical aperture, polarization and Fresnel number.  Microscopy concepts. Coherent and incoherent imaging; transfer functions, Abbe imaging theory, illumination system, imaging performance, microscope objectives, partially-coherent imaging. The generalized microscope. Phase contrast; defocus, dark field, Zernike phase  contrast, differential phase contrast. Polarization imaging. Confocal microscopy and imaging;
principles and instruments. surface profiling. image formation in the confocal microscope. Fluorescence microscopy; detectors, signal, signal-to-noise ratio, comparative performance of imaging systems. Super resolution in microscopy. Advances in pupil filters. Three-D imaging; 3D transfer functions, holography and tomography. Three-dimensional imaging  techniques;  interference  microscopy  and  OCT,  multiphoton  imaging,  fringe  projection. Image modeling and reconstruction; tomography, Born and Kirchhoff approximations.  
The examination consists in a journal club based on a selected list of papers provided to the students

Reading list
Please  refer  to  the  Educational  Program  Section  of  the  NIC@IIT  -
http://www.nic.iit.it/education-program-training/.  
Notes by Colin Sheppard will be available at the Course.

Specific textbooks for this Course are:
- E. Hecht, Optics, Addison Wesley (2002)
- A.Diaspro (ed.), Confocal and Two-Photon Microscopy: Foundations, Applications and
Advances, Wiley (2001)
- J.Pawley (ed.) Handbook of Confocal Microscopy, Springer (2006)
- CJR Sheppard and D.Shotton, Confocal Laser Scanning MIcroscopy, Garland Science (1997)

Venue
 IIT -  Sala Montalcini-Auditorium - Via Morego 30,  16163 Genova

Course date
March 2017