This book provides readers a theoretical framework to understand different types of surface plasmon (SP) microscope setups through the rigorous diffraction theory. The framework analyses the diffraction process through rigorous wave coupled analysis (RCWA) and a software package processes the diffracted orders to recover the microscope response for a range of different systems. In this book I will investigate the non-interferometric SP microscope, interferometric SP microscope and confocal SP microscope. I will show that the non-interferometric system exhibits a trade-off between lateral...