Patent ID: 7034271

Claim:
A two-beam, full-field imaging interference microscope, comprising: a source of incoherent light; a beamsplitter, optically aligned with the source of incoherent light; a sample objective optically aligned with the beamsplitter, disposed in a sample arm; a reference mirror optically aligned with the beamsplitter, disposed in a reference arm; a reference objective optically aligned with the beamsplitter, disposed in the reference arm; optical path length matching means for matching the optical path lengths of the reference and sample arms; wavefront curvature matching means for matching the wavefront curvatures of the reference and sample arms; and image forming means, optically aligned with both the sample arm and the reference arm, and disposed on the opposite side of the beamsplitter from the sample objective, for forming at an image plane a combined real full-field image of both the surface of the sample and the surface of the reference mirror, whereby said combined real image contains one or more interference fringes; wherein the reference objective is not optically identical to the sample objective.