ABSTRACT
The main advantage of a confocal laser scanning microscope, when compared with a conventional fluorescence microscope, is the former’s ability to slice very clean thin optical sections out of thick fluorescent specimen, optically dissecting a specimen without any physical manipulation. Those sections can be assembled for 3D views at high resolution. The important technical difference between a conventional microscope and the confocal laser scanning microscope approach is the existence of two pinholes in the axis of light. In this way, light scattered from parts other than the illuminated point on the specimen is rejected from the optical system. The specimen is scanned through a moving point of light, and the variation of emitted light, modulated by the specimen, is captured by a photoelectric cell.
