The resolution limit of far-field optical microscopy is reexamined with a full vectorial theoretical analysis. A highly symmetric excitation optical field and optimized detection scheme are proposed to harness the total point-spread function for a microscopic system. Spatial resolution of better than $1/6$\lambda${}$ is shown to be obtainable, giving rise to a resolution better than 100 nm with visible light excitation. The experimental measurement is applied to examine nonfluorescent samples. A lateral resolution of $1/5$\lambda${}$ is obtained in truly far-field optical microscopy with a working distance greater than $$\sim${}500$\lambda${}$. Comparison is made for the far-field microscopic measurement with that of a nearfield scanning optical microscopy, showing that the proposed scheme provides a better image quality.

Optical imaging through complex media has many important applications. Although research progresses have been made to recover optical image through various turbid media, the widespread application of the technology is hampered by the recovery speed, requirement on specific illumination, poor image quality and limited field of view. Here we demonstrate that above-mentioned drawbacks can be essentially overcome. The realization of high speed color imaging through turbid media is successfully carried out by taking into account the media memory effect, the point spread function, the exit pupil of the optical system, and the optimized signal to noise ratio. By retrieving selected speckles with enlarged field of view, high quality image is recovered with a responding speed only determined by the frame rates of the image capturing devices. The immediate application of the technique is expected to register static and dynamic imaging under human skin to recover information with a wearable device.

We have experimentally demonstrated the measurement of a tighter focal spot generated by a radially polarized narrow-width annular beam with the double-knife-edge method. The reconstructed spot profiles indicate that sharper focus cannot be achieved by shrinking the annular aperture further. The smallest focal spot ($0.0711{\lambda }^2$) is obtained in experiment with an annular factor of 0.91. An apodization function has been introduced with the consideration of the diffraction effect, which achieves good agreement with the experimental data. Our result shows that the diffraction effect should be considered with small topography structures of the incident beam.

Human ability to visualize an image is usually hindered by optical scattering. Recent extensive studies have promoted imaging technique through turbid materials to a reality where color image can be restored behind scattering media in real time. The big challenge now is to recover objects in a large field of view with depth resolving ability. Based on the existing research results, we systematically study the physical relationship between speckles generated from objects at different planes. By manipulating a given single point spread function, depth-resolved imaging through a thin scattering medium can be extended beyond the original depth of field (DOF). Experimental testing of standard scattering media shows that the DOF can be extended up to 5 times and the physical mechanism is depicted. This extended DOF is benefit to 3D imaging through scattering environment, and it is expected to have important applications in science, technology, bio-medical, security and defense.

We demonstrate a high-speed method to image objects through thin scattering media and around corners. The method employs a reference object of known shape to retrieve the speckle-like point spread function of the scatterer. We extract the point spread function of the scatterer from a dynamic scene that includes a static reference object and uses this to image the dynamic objects. Sharp images are reconstructed from the transmission through a diffuser and from the reflection off a rough surface. The sharp and clean reconstructed images from single shot data exemplify the robustness of the method.