METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR IMPROVING IMAGE RESOLUTION

摘要

Embodiments of the invention allow the operation of confocal microscopes with relatively open pinholes (e.g. 1 Airy unit) whilst still giving a significant XY resolution improvement. In addition axial (Z) discrimination or resolution may also be improved. An embodiment based on differences in the defocusing behaviour should yield improved optical sectioning. This is achieved by splitting the emitted light path in an interferometric fashion at a position in the standard system it would normally not be split. This would typically be after the objective and after the (de-)scanning optics but before the pinhole or another spatially discriminating detector. One of the split beams is then directed to an image transformation system, which applies an image transformation which spatially displaces those parts of the image which are not on or near the optical axis within the image plane or whose effect depends on the amount of defocus. For example, the image transformation may be an image inversion which inverts at least one coordinate in image space. The transformed beam and the non-transformed beam are then recombined in an interferometric fashion (i.e. coherently added), which provides an interference effect resulting in increased resolution of the image. Where the embodiments are being used in a confocal application, the resulting combined beam can then be subject to a spatially discriminating means, such as a pinhole, or the like.