1. An apparatus for detecting optical characteristics of a sub-surface object located at an object plane, comprising: a light source for providing an illumination beam that propagates along an illumination path defined by said light source and the object, an illumination system that transforms said illumination beam into a high contrast illumination pattern and projects said illumination pattern onto the sub-surface object; and an imaging system that includes an image capturing device for detecting an image of the sub-surface object, said image being formed by scattered illumination from said high contrast illumination pattern that is transmitted through the sub-surface object and propagates along an image path to said image capturing device, said image path defined by the object and said image capturing means.