Experimental study of moiré method in laser scanning confocal microscopy

By integrating moiré method with laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM), a novel class of moiré patterns, i.e., LSCM moiré patterns, is presented and investigated by experiment in this article. The moiré patterns are formed by the interference of a 1200line∕mm cross-line holographic grating and the scanning lines of LSCM. The principles and conditions of forming LSCM moiré are described in detail. The measured parameters of moiré fringes from experimental images agree well with theoretical analysis. The experimental results verify the feasibility and reality of the proposed moiré method to be another effective and high accuracy technique for measuring and observing in-plane microdeformation at micrometer scale.