Diffraction-limited axial scanning in thick biological tissue with an aberration-correcting adaptive lens

Diffraction-limited deep focusing into biological tissue is challenging due to aberrations that lead to a broadening of the focal spot. The diffraction limit can be restored by employing aberration correction for example with a deformable mirror. However, this results in a bulky setup due to the required beam folding. We propose a bi-actuator adaptive lens that simultaneously enables axial scanning and the correction of specimen-induced spherical aberrations with a compact setup. Using the bi-actuator lens in a confocal microscope, we show diffraction-limited axial scanning up to 340 μm deep inside a phantom specimen. The application of this technique to in vivo measurements of zebrafish embryos with reporter-gene-driven fluorescence in a thyroid gland reveals substructures of the thyroid follicles, indicating that the bi-actuator adaptive lens is a meaningful supplement to the existing adaptive optics toolset.