The motivation to collect contributions from a wide variety of subjects in cont- porary optics, centered around optical imaging, originates from two ideas. First, it is easy to recognise that certain ?elds of contemporary optics have been devel- ing in quite a parallel manner. Sometimes workers of the di?erent ?elds discover each other’s contributions, but mostly they do not. One of our major goals is to show how closely these contributions are inter-related. Such an example is the – velopment of scanning/confocal optical microscopy and optical data storage. In the former, imaging in the classical sense, occurs by scanning a tightly focused laser beam over the sample. In optical data storage imaging does not occur as the aim is to detect pits, rather than to image them. Nevertheless, the optical systems of these two arrangements have striking resemblance and hence their governing equations are practically the same. The second motivation of this book is to collect contri- tions from imaging related subjects that were not previously published in this form or they are di?cult to access. Such examples are a chapter on white light interfer- etry, surface plasmon microscopy or the characterisation of high numerical aperture microscope objective lenses. We are extremely pleased that we have contributions in this book from the – ternational leaders of individual ?elds. It has been our privilege to work with these authors and we would like to take this opportunity to thank them all.
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