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 2021, we created an objective database with 519 systems, thus clearly sorting its application-oriented development history. Furthermore, according to the analysis of the aberration behavior, the correction method of microscope objectives are understood with new insights. The lenses are decomposed into structural and functional lens modules, which, as a reversed process, can be inserted locally or synthesized globally to generate new structures. This knowledge helps the optical designer understand the well-known structures, which can also be utilized in the machine-learning tools to interpolate or extrapolate the solution space. This makes the conventional system design more systematic.