Glossary
W
- water dipping objective
- A type of specialized objective that is designed to be directly immersed in an aqueous sample medium for observation without a coverslip. They often feature nose cones made from chemically inert and electrically insulating materials such as ceramic.
- See also: water immersion objective, immersion objective, objective lens, immersion medium, mounting medium, coverslip, electrophysiology, light sheet fluorescence microscopy, refractive index
- water immersion objective
- An objective lens designed for use with water (or an optically similar medium) as the immersion medium. This provides optimal optical performance when imaging samples in an aqueous medium. These objectives are typically designed for use with coverslips, while "water dipping" objectives are intended for direct immersion in the sample.
- See also: water dipping objective, immersion objective, objective lens, immersion medium, mounting medium, coverslip, refractive index
- wave
- Fundamentally, a wave can refer to any disturbance that propagates in space. Visible light is a type of electromagnetic radiation and propagates as a wave (electromagnetic wave). Note that light can also be quantized and treated as consisting of discrete particles (photons), which led to the concept of wave-particle duality.
- wave group
- A set of component electromagnetic waves traveling together and part of a discrete burst of energy. Component waves interact according to the superposition principle, and can be of a varying frequency. Both the wave group and its component waves are solutions of the wave equation.
- Synonyms: wave train, wave packet
- See also: wave optics, wave, wavefront
- wave optics
- A branch of physics concerned with optical phenomena that cannot be properly described using geometric optics, such as diffraction, interference, polarization, etc.
- Synonyms: physical optics
- See also: geometric optics, diffraction, polarized light, interference
- wave packet
- see wave group
- wave plate
- Typically, a birefringent material that has been cut with a flat surface such that the optic axis is parallel with it. The result is that a fixed amount of retardation is introduced between the ordinary and extraordinary rays while maintaining the same direction of propagation.
- Synonyms: retardation plate
- See also: compensator, retardation, polarized light, polarized light microscopy, quarter-wave plate, half-wave plate, full-wave plate
- wave train
- see wave group
- wavefront
- The surface formed by each point in a propagating wave that are of equivalent phase, they are most often planar or spherical, and sometimes cylindrical.
- See also: wave, wave optics, spherical wave, plane wave, wave group
- white balancing
- A post-processing software function that adjusts the color temperature of an image to better simulate various lighting environments.
- whole slide imaging (WSI)
- An imaging approach that captures an entire glass slide as an image file via sequential acquisition of different fields of view and image stitching. This is ideal for pathology, tissue analysis, and large scale specimens.
- Synonyms: slide scanning
- See also: image stitching, PreciPoint series, digital pathology
- widefield eyepiece
- An eyepiece designed to maximize the field of view, even compared to other eyepieces of similar magnification. It is ideal for widefield applications where the specimen takes up the full field.
- See also: eyepiece, field of view
- Wollaston prism
- A prism formed from the combination of two birefringent materials cemented together that separates (shears) the ordinary and extraordinary rays at a given divergence angle. It is widely used in differential interference contrast (DIC) microscopy.
- See also: Nomarski prism, birefringence, prism, ordinary ray, extraordinary ray, polarized light, polarized light microscopy
- working distance (WD)
- The distance between the front surface of an objective lens and the most proximal surface of the coverslip (for coverslip-corrected objectives) or the object plane for objectives that aren't coverslip-corrected. The working distance of an objective is usually inscribed on the barrel.
- See also: free working distance, objective lens, object plane, coverslip correction
