August 8, 2008: Boston Micromachines Corp., a provider of MEMS-based deformable mirror (DM) products for adaptive optics systems, has launched a new high speed, high precision controller for its award winning Multi-DM. With >30kHz frame rate and 14bit resolution, the Multi-DM Controller provides a fifty fold improvement in speed and resolution over its predecessor.
Boston Micromachines was also able to engineer the new controller in a package five times smaller than the previous version. Theses improvements enable the Multi-DM (photo below) to be easily integrated into commercial imaging instruments.
“As adaptive optics technology evolves into the commercial market and manufacturers equip to integrate adaptive optics into next generation biological imaging instruments, they require a compact high speed, high resolution deformable mirror system,” said Paul Bierden, president and CEO of Boston Micromachines. “Our new Multi-DM Controller provides a perfect fit for integrating adaptive optics into microscopes as well as retinal and biological imaging systems. The new controller allows the Multi-DM to make the transition from a research tool to a component being integrated into commercial instruments.”
“The Multi-DM Controller enabled us to easily integrate adaptive optics into our Adaptive Scanning Optical Microscope (ASOM), which has the ability to view large areas of a biological sample without sacrificing image resolution,” said Scott Barry, Thorlabs’ ASOM business unit leader.
Adaptive optics, which was originally developed to help astronomers obtain high resolution images by compensating for aberrations caused by the Earth’s atmosphere, is now being used in retinal and biological imaging. In retinal imaging, adaptive optics is used to correct for cornea-induced wavefront aberration, which causes image distortions making it difficult to obtain a clear view of the human retina. The Multi-DM provides a solution to this challenge. Biological imaging instruments also suffer from resolution limitations, constraining the ability of researchers and clinicians to detect critical detail. The Multi-DM provides the capability to actively correct for these aberrations and restore resolution.