A spinning-disk confocal microscopy system, and components thereof, with improved illumination. The system may include a liquid light guide (LLG), a reflecting mirror tube, and/or other light guide directing light from a light source to the system's confocal optics. An LLG may provide certain advantages over other conveyance mechanisms. For example, thermal motion of the liquid in the LLG may alter the optical path and scatter light, reducing or eliminating spatial and temporal coherence introduced by the light source. This, in turn, may create more uniform illumination on samples. A reflecting mirror tube may similarly have advantages.

An axially swept light sheet fluorescence microscope has illumination optics capable scanning the focus region of a line beam along an illumination optical axis to illuminate a light sheet in a sample plane, and detection optics capable of collecting fluorescence light from the sample plane and imaging the collected light on a light detector with a rolling shutter. A microcontroller synchronizes the rolling shutter with the scanning of the focus region. The illumination optics performs the axial scanning using a linear phased array of independently controllable electrostatically driven optical elements controlled by the microcontroller.

Systems, methods and devices are implemented for microscope imaging solutions. One embodiment of the present disclosure is directed toward an epifluorescence microscope. The microscope includes an image capture circuit including an array of optical sensor. An optical arrangement is configured to direct excitation light of less than about 1 mW to a target object in a field of view of that is at least 0.5 mm.sup.2 and to direct epi-fluorescence emission caused by the excitation light to the array of optical sensors. The optical arrangement and array of optical sensors are each sufficiently close to the target object to provide at least 2.5 μm resolution for an image of the field of view.

An imaging system for a biological sample includes a sample container having at least one biological cell that is in contact with an interface surface of a container interface. The imaging system also includes illuminating optics that output a light beam aligned with a sample plane, the light beam being oriented horizontally along a transverse (XY) plane and illuminating the biological cell vertically along an axial (XZ) plane. The imaging system further includes imaging optics aligned horizontally along the transverse (XY) plane with the interface in the sample container, the imaging optics being configured to detect along the axial (XZ) plane a magnified image of a measurable contact angle between the biological cell and the interface surface. The measurable contact angle changes over time and is indicative of biological adhesion between the biological cell and another biological cell.

A method for operating a microscopy system and to a microscopy system are provided. A pivot point is defined, wherein the microscopy system is operated such that a microscope of the microscopy system moves at a constant distance around the pivot point, wherein a reference surface is determined, wherein an intersection of an optical axis of the microscope and the reference surface is determined as the pivot point, wherein the pose of the reference surface is defined in a focal position-independent reference coordinate system and the pivot point is determined as the intersection of the optical axis with the thus defined reference surface in the reference coordinate system.

A light sheet microscope, such as an oblique plane microscope or a swept confocally-aligned planar excitation (SCAPE) microscope, includes an optical system with a first optical element, a second optical element and a mirror assembly. In a first operational state of the microscope, the optical system is configured to transmit illumination light along a first illumination light path through the first optical element into a first sample volume, and configured to transmit observation light along a first observation light path from the first sample volume to a detector device. In a second operational state of the microscope, the optical system is configured to transmit the illumination light along a second illumination light path via the mirror assembly through the second optical element into a second sample volume, and configured to transmit observation light along a second observation light path from the second sample volume to the detector device.

Provided is a scanning microscope including a pinhole array disk having a plurality of pinholes restricting a light flux of illumination light for irradiating a sample, the plurality of pinholes being disposed so as to form an array about a center axis; a rotational driving unit rotating the pinhole array disk about the center axis; an objective lens irradiating the sample with the illumination light that has passed through the pinholes and collecting fluorescence from the sample to cause the fluorescence to enter the pinholes; a camera acquiring an image of the sample by repeatedly capturing the fluorescence that has passed through the pinholes; and a stimulation optical system irradiating the sample with stimulation light, wherein the system includes a stimulation-timing generating unit decreasing the intensity of the stimulation light during exposure periods of the camera and increasing the intensity of the stimulation light during periods between exposure periods.

A microscope device includes an excitation beam output unit, an optical system, and a harmonic detector. The excitation beam output unit outputs excitation beam. A temporal waveform of a light intensity of the excitation beam includes an n-th root (n is an integer of 2 or more) of a linear function of a sine wave. A maximum value of the light intensity of the excitation beam is higher than a saturation excitation intensity of an object to be observed. The optical system irradiates the object to be observed with the excitation beam output from the excitation beam output unit. Fluorescence is generated in the object to be observed due to an n-photon excitation by the irradiation with the excitation beam. The harmonic detector detects a second harmonic included in a temporal waveform of a light intensity of the fluorescence.

A non-destructive method for chemical imaging with ˜1 nm to 10 μm spatial resolution (depending on the type of heat source) without sample preparation and in a non-contact manner. In one embodiment, a sample undergoes photo-thermal heating using an IR laser and the resulting increase in thermal emissions is measured with either an IR detector or a laser probe having a visible laser reflected from the sample. In another embodiment, the infrared laser is replaced with a focused electron or ion source while the thermal emission is collected in the same manner as with the infrared heating. The achievable spatial resolution of this embodiment is in the 1-50 nm range.

Method for obtaining an super-resolution image (22) of an object (5), based upon an optical microscope (21) including a support plate (6) for bearing the object, an illumination source (1) for focusing an illumination beam (14) onto a target region of the support plate, a digital camera (9) including a matrix of sensors, comprising: capturing, by the digital camera, a first image of the target region; extracting, from the first image, a first block of pixel values provided by a sub-matrix (B.sub.0) of the matrix of sensors; displacing, by a sub-diffraction limited distance, the support plate by the displacement block along a displacement axis; capturing, by the digital camera, a second image of the target region; extracting, from the second image, a second block of pixel values provided by the sub-matrix (B.sub.0) of the matrix of sensors; storing said first and second blocks of pixel values as a first and second blocks of pixel values to be placed right next each other in the super-resolution image along the image axis (X, Y) corresponding to the displacement axis.