Abstract

A new laser scanning microscope is proposed for imaging a three-dimensional absorption structure of a sample. The microscope is based on a confocal system built with excitation and absorption-monitoring lasers. The excitation laser produces excited molecules, and the absorption-monitoring laser probes their transient absorption. A three-dimensional optical transfer function of the microscope is theoretically derived to demonstrate a tomographic imaging capability. The spatial frequency cutoff is confirmed to be independent of the detector size. An experimental result is shown to verify the depth discrimination property.

© 1992 Optical Society of America

Dependence of two- and three-dimensional optical transfer functions on pinhole radius in a coherent confocal microscope

Valter Drazic
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9(5) 725-731 (1992)

Three-dimensional transfer-function analysis of the tomographic capability of a confocal fluorescence microscope

Osamu Nakamura and Satoshi Kawata
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 7(3) 522-526 (1990)

Three-dimensional optical transfer function in a fiber-optical confocal fluorescence microscope using annular lenses

Min Gu and C. J. R. Sheppard
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9(11) 1991-1999 (1992)

Properties of a 4Pi confocal fluorescence microscope

Stefan Hell and Ernst H. K. Stelzer
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 9(12) 2159-2166 (1992)

Calculation of three-dimensional optical transfer function for a confocal scanning fluorescent microscope

Shigeharu Kimura and Chusuke Munakata
J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 6(7) 1015-1019 (1989)