JP-2022520996-A5 -

Dates

Publication Date

20221227

Application Date

20200117

Description

More specifically with respect to the components described above, the electromagnetic wave source 2 is often substantially monochromatic, more often laser light source (hereinafter referred to as 2 in this specification), such as a tunable laser light source, but may also be any other suitable type of light source (e.g., white light source) configured (e.g., by filtering) to produce an illumination beam configured to have a desired frequency band for a particular application (e.g., imaging, fluorescence) and to provide the required intensity. In exemplary non-limiting fluorescence applications, the laser light source 2 is often, but not necessarily, a green laser beam (e.g., a 4.5 mW laser diode at a wavelength of 532 nm) configured to be received by a lens system 4, which is often a microlens array (hereinafter referred to as 4 in this specification). A beam splitter 318 (for example, one for AOBS) is positioned to receive the beam for illumination from the illumination source 302. In a preferred mode of operation, the beam splitter 318 is positioned as described above with respect to Figure 1A, with respect to the illumination source 3 The illumination beam (not shown) provided by 02 is configured to be directed towards the test specimen 1 using the objective lens 314. The beam splitter 318 is also positioned to receive the reflected beam and/or the fluorescent beam (not shown) from the test specimen 1, as described above with respect to Figure 1A, so as directed by the objective lens 314 and/or any other intermediary optical component, such as a tube (relay) lens (not shown). The beam splitter 54 then As will be described in detail in the following description of the embodiments, the received beam (reflected beam and/or fluorescent beam) is configured to be directed toward the photodetector CCD array 312 and/or any other optical detection elements (e.g., photodetectors 306, 308). It should be understood that the digital confocal optical profile microscope 300 does not necessarily include a physical pinhole, as a novel type of CCD is present where a pinhole would typically be configured in a standard confocal arrangement for directly detecting the optical information of a signal beam. The CCD 1 312 array includes any desired two-dimensional charge-coupled array, often including complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor ("CMOS") detectors, EMCCD and sCMOS technologies, as described above, for example, as described below. The CCD-based detection results are shown in Figures 6A-6I. Specifically, Figure 6A shows the image formation of the fiber, Figure 6B shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 2 × 2N pixels, Figure 6C shows the crop size (composite aperture) of N = 6 × 6 pixels, Figure 6D shows the crop size (composite aperture) of N = 11 × 11 pixels, Figure 6E shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 21 × 21N pixels, Figure 6F shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 31 × 31N pixels, Figure 6G shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 41 × 41N pixels, Figure 6H shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 51 × 51N pixels, and Figure 6I shows the crop size (composite aperture) of 101 × 10¹N pixels. It is important to note that the image exhibits clarity at the best or acceptable resolution from a 2x2 pixel array size to a 21x21 pixel array composite aperture, which is consistent with the results of the response curve in Figure 4. However, it is important to note that while the 2x2 pixel array size to the 21x21 pixel size array (i.e., composite aperture) is beneficial, the 6x6 example (see, for example, Figure 6C) gives the closest match to the 2x2 example (see, for example, Figure 6B), and still retains a considerable number of pixels.