LASER SCANNING MICROSCOPE

摘要

A laser scanning microscope generating a given control signal irrespective of the hardware configuration. A memory (64X) has a bit width wider than the bit width of drive data according to a drive table for generating a drive signal X for allowing a scanner driven by a drive circuit (66X) to scan a specified region at a specified speed and stores the drive table. A controller (61) sets a control signal for controlling a predetermined operation of predetermined mechanisms having a strict temporal relation with the scanning based on the drive data. The control signal is set in the other bits than the bits used by the drive data among the bit width that the memory (64X) has. The mechanisms conduct predetermined operations according to the control signal read simultaneously with the read of the drive data from memory (64X). The invention can be applied to any confocal laser scanning microscope for observing a specimen by scanning the specimen with a laser beam.