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Confocal microscopy (CM) is the special technique of light microscopy in which the inspected region of specimen at a time is a small (submicron) voxel (=3D pixel). Signals from nearby voxels are suppressed by a special (confocal) optical design. An important element of this design is a pinhole in the image space. The point source of light, the inspected voxel and the pinhole are confocal. Light coming from the neighborhood of the inspected voxel is blocked from reaching the detector. To obtain the 3D image of the whole sample, the tightly focused laser beam scans the specimen voxel by voxel. Usually, it is implemented by optical scanning in the horizontal plane and then mechanical refocusing at different depth in the sample and repeating the horizontal scanning. As the result, the image is presented as a stack of thin (submicron) horizontal optical slices. Using a computer, the data that describe an essentially 3D pattern, can be presented as a horizontal or vertical ''cross-sections'' of the sample. The last feature makes the confocal microscope very different from the usual microscope in which the information over the path of light is integrated and the 3D image is essentially compressed to a 2D picture.
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