Beamsplitters and prisms are not only found in a wide variety of common optical instruments, such as cameras, binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, periscopes, range finders, and surveying equipment, but also in many sophisticated scientific instruments including interferometers. Beamsplitters and prisms are not only found in a wide variety of common optical instruments, such as cameras, binoculars, microscopes, telescopes, periscopes, range finders, and surveying equipment, but also in many sophisticated scientific instruments including interferometers. What are Beam Splitters? A beam splitter (or beamsplitter, power splitter) is an optical device which can split an incident light beam (e. a laser beam) into two (or sometimes more) beams, which may or may not have the same optical power (radiant flux). Different types of beam splitters exist, as. There are two basic types of beamsplitters: Non-polarizing beamsplitters (NPBS): This type of splitter is used to divide (split) a beam into two beams and each output beam is a fraction of the incoming beam regardless of the polarizations. Non-polarizing beamsplitters are used in a variety of. In this article, we review optical inspection and sensing systems where the illumination is a laser source that is focused by the same objective as the objective used for imaging the surface, known as beam splitter microscope imaging systems. Beam splitters typically come in the form of a reflective device that can split beams into exactly 50/50, half of the beam being transmitted through the splitter and half being reflected.