INTEGRATED SCANNING MINIATURE OPTICAL HEAD FOR PRODUCING A HOMOGENEOUS CONFOCAL IMAGE, AND CONFOCAL IMAGING SYSTEM USING SAME

摘要

The head has a laser source to produce a light beam (13), and a ball lens (12), with a large numerical aperture, disposed at the end of the head to converge the beam at an excitation point (19). The point is located in an observed sub-surface field (14) of a sample (15). A scanning unit (10) displaces the source in rotation such that the point scans the field. - An INDEPENDENT CLAIM is also included for a confocal imaging system.