Photonics Dictionary: W

Whole slide imaging (WSI), also known as virtual slide microscopy or digital pathology, is a technology that involves the digitalization of entire glass slides containing histological or cytological...

A system used for gratings that consists of a concave mirror, a grating and a plate holder mounted normal to the grating to reduce astigmatism and spherical aberration. The mounting yields a...

In the context of electronics and semiconductor manufacturing, a wafer refers to a thin, flat disk or substrate made of a semiconducting material, usually crystalline silicon. Wafers serve as the...

The power that gives rise to the production of energy at the rate of 1 joule per second.

An optical element having two principal axes, slow and fast, that resolve an incident polarized beam into two mutually perpendicular polarized beams. The emerging beam recombines to form a particular...

A waveguide is a physical structure or device that is designed to confine and guide electromagnetic waves, such as radio waves, microwaves, or light waves. It is commonly used in communication...

An optical element having plane-inclined surfaces. Usually the faces are inclined toward one another at very small angles. Wedges divert light toward their thicker portions, and may be circular,...

The Weissenberg method, named after the German physicist Karl Weissenberg, is a technique used in x-ray crystallography for obtaining high-quality diffraction patterns from single crystals. This...

A well plate, also known as a microplate or microtiter plate, is a flat plate with multiple small wells or depressions arranged in a grid pattern. Each well serves as a separate container for holding...

A feature of some imaging devices, such as digital cameras, that allows them to compensate for different lighting conditions by adjusting the color balance based on the difference between a white...

An extremely wide emission spectrum generated by the nonlinear effects created when a high peak power from a short-pulse laser is focused into a water or carbon tetrachloride cell. The resulting...

A wide-angle lens is a type of camera lens that has a shorter focal length than a standard or normal lens, allowing it to capture a broader field of view. Wide-angle lenses are characterized by their...

The formula that gives the wavelength of maximum spectral radiant emittance of a perfect blackbody: λmax = 2898/T(µm) The radiation at this λmax can be calculated as follows:...

A method that embraces the classical approach to image restoration and attempts to minimize the mean square difference between the original ungraded signal and the restoration.

1. A piece of glass with plane parallel surfaces used to admit light into an optical system and to exclude dirt and moisture. 2. A particular region of the electromagnetic spectrum that has been...

Specified curved optic intended for maximum collection of light, including off-axis rays, before leaving the exit aperture.

A polarizing prism consisting of two calcite prisms cemented such that they deviate the two emerging beams (which are mutually perpendicularly polarized) by nearly equal amounts in opposite...

In digital image processing, a unit equal to 16 bits.

The maximum aperture of a lens at which it will still give a sharp image, even though its physical aperture may be larger.

A Cassegrain telescope having a parabolic primary mirror, a spherical secondary mirror and a zero-power doublet in the converging bundle for aberration correction.