The disclosure relates to a method for scanning microscopy wherein a specimen is scanned simultaneously with a plurality of illumination spots of an excitation light. The light emitted by one specimen location irradiated with one illumination spot is detected independently of the light emitted by another specimen location illuminated with another illumination spot. A microscopic image of the specimen can be compiled from the emitted light detected for the different specimen locations. The method provides that the intensities of the different illumination spots are set independently of one another, and in that the illumination spots are guided over the specimen one after another in a scan line. The disclosure additionally relates to a scanning microscope.

The present invention refers to a method for high spatial resolution imaging comprising a phase plate or a spatial light modulator (SLM) device for STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy and Reversible Saturable OpticaL Fluorescence Transitions (RESOLFT) microscopy, where a bivortex pattern is imprinted on the said phase plate or SLM to generate a beam. The bivortex pattern allows some freedom in shaping the STED beam to improve the microscope's axial performance and optical sectioning capacity. The present invention further refers to a method for STED and RESOLFT microscopy comprising the step of modulating the optical phase of a laser using a phase plate or a spatial light modulator device with a phase mask comprising a bivortex with a tunable radius. The disclosed phase masks and methods of STED and RESOLFT microscopy may advantageously be applied to provide a hybrid 2D/3D STED regime but one with a significant reduction in the degrees of freedom for alignment relative to what is found in incoherent beam superpositions, thus providing an improvement in beam quality, namely a minimized central intensity and lower sensitivity to aberrations, resulting in an increased signal level and axial performance.

A three-dimensional (3D) microscope includes various insertable components that facilitate multiple imaging and measurement capabilities. These capabilities include Nomarski imaging, polarized light imaging, quantitative differential interference contrast (q-DIC) imaging, motorized polarized light imaging, phase-shifting interferometry (PSI), and vertical-scanning interferometry (VSI).

An optic system assists visualization of eye elements during ophthalmic surgery. The system has optic devices aimed at affecting light emitted by an ophthalmic microscope for observing an eye during surgery. This affecting can be by selecting the wavelength spectrum of the emitted light, tilting a light path of the emitted light and/or by changing the light path of the emitted light from the source to the eye under surgery.

A medical image processing device of the present disclosure includes: a division unit configured to divide at least one subject image in an image; a detection unit configured to detect a blur of the subject image divided by the division unit; a correction unit configured to correct the blur of the subject image based on the subject image divided by the division unit and the blur detected by the detection unit; and a combining unit configured to combine the subject image after correction and a background image formed by a region other than the subject image.

A control device for controlling a microscope includes: a computation module. The control device: adjusts a sample volume velocity of a sample volume of the microscope relative to the microscope; and adjusts a light sheet velocity of the light sheet of the microscope relative to the microscope based on the sample volume velocity.

The present description relates to a device for line-scanning optical coherence tomographic microscopy. The device comprises an interferometric microscope comprising a reference arm, an object arm configured to receive an object, a beam splitter coupling said object arm and reference arm to a light source and to a sensor, and a first microscope objective arranged on said object arm. It further comprises a one-dimensional confocal spatial filtering device configured to interact with said light source in order to illuminate said object along a focal line located in an object space of the first microscope objective, and a device for unidirectional scanning of said focal line, which device is arranged on said object arm upstream of said first microscope objective and is configured to scan the focal line in a lateral direction (y) substantially perpendicular to an optical axis (z) of said first microscope objective.

The disclosed technology brings histopathology into the operating theatre, to enable real-time intra-operative digital pathology. The disclosed technology utilizes confocal imaging devices image, in the operating theatre, “optical slices” of fresh tissue—without the need to physically slice and otherwise process the resected tissue as required by frozen section analysis (FSA). The disclosed technology, in certain embodiments, includes a simple, operating-table-side digital histology scanner, with the capability of rapidly scanning all outer margins of a tissue sample (e.g., resection lump, removed tissue mass). Using point-scanning microscopy technology, the disclosed technology, in certain embodiments, precisely scans a thin “optical section” of the resected tissue, and sends the digital image to a pathologist rather than the real tissue, thereby providing the pathologist with the opportunity to analyze the tissue intra-operatively. Thus, the disclosed technology provides digital images with similar information content as FSA, but faster and without destroying the tissue sample itself.

An apparatus for characterizing luminescent entities by excitation comprising: • a substrate (6) being in contact with a solution comprising luminescent entities; • a source of electromagnetic radiation (4) providing at least a primary beam of radiation (8); an objective (5); a first optical element (1) capable of transforming the intensity profile of the primary beam (8) into an arbitrary secondary intensity profile (distribution) (9); a second optical element (2) capable of separating (discriminating) radiation by wavelength; and a detector (7), where the arbitrary secondary intensity profile has at least an off-center circular continuous intensity distribution (33) focused on the back focal plane (12) of the objective forming a collimated beam (10) capable of creating an evanescent field on the side of the substrate where the solution comprising luminescent entities are located, where the evanescent field excites the luminescent entities thereby creating emission radiation separated by the second optical element (2) and captioned by the detector (7). The invention also relates to an apparatus comprising two optical elements providing a final third intensity profile (distribution) which is the convolution of two mathematical transformations corresponding to each of optical element one and four, respectively.

A system and method for adaptive illumination, the imaging system comprising an excitation source having a modulator, which generates a pulse intensity pattern having a first wavelength when the excitation source receives a modulation pattern. The modulation pattern is a data sequence of a structural image of a sample. An amplifier of the imaging system is configured to receive and amplify the pulse intensity pattern from the modulator. A frequency shift mechanism of the imaging system shifts the first wavelength of the pulse intensity pattern to a second wavelength. A laser scanning microscope of the imaging system receives the pulse intensity pattern having the second wavelength.