History and New Insights: Design of Microscope Objectives

The light microscope objective is the most well-known high numerical aperture (NA) optical system that can be applied to various applications. By collecting relevant US, JP and DE patents from 1926 to 2020, we created an objective database with 514 systems, thus clearly sorting its application-oriented development history. Furthermore, according to the analysis of the aberration behavior, the correction method of microscope objectives can be understood with new insights. The lenses can be decomposed into structural and functional lens modules, which, as a reversed process, can be inserted locally or synthesized globally to generate new structures. These knowledges can help the optical designer to understand the well-known structures and can also be utilized in the machine-learning tools to make this conventional system design more systematic.