Confocal microscopy

Confocal microscopy is a light-microscopy method that uses a spatial pinhole to reject out-of-focus light. It produces optical sections that can be combined into three-dimensional images.

Confocal aperture: A small spatial opening placed at a plane conjugate to the focal plane in a confocal microscope. It blocks light from outside the focal plane, providing the method’s defining optical rejection.
Fluorescence microscopy: Microscopy that forms images from light emitted by fluorescent molecules after excitation. Confocal instruments commonly use fluorescence to distinguish labeled structures from surrounding material.
Widefield microscopy: Light microscopy that illuminates and images a broad field of the specimen at once. Unlike confocal microscopy, it collects out-of-focus emission, which can obscure detail in thick samples.
Marvin Minsky: An American scientist and artificial-intelligence researcher who developed an early confocal microscope. His 1957 patent described the key arrangement for rejecting out-of-focus light.
Point spread function: The three-dimensional image produced by an optical system from an ideal point source. The confocal point spread function determines how sharply the microscope resolves structures.
Point-scanning microscopy: Microscopy that forms an image by measuring signals from successive locations across a specimen. Most confocal systems scan a focused spot and assemble its detected signals into an image.
Three-dimensional microscopy: Microscopy that reconstructs the spatial organization of a specimen in three dimensions. Stacking confocal optical sections yields a depth-resolved volume.
Two-photon microscopy: Fluorescence microscopy that excites a fluorophore through the near-simultaneous absorption of two lower-energy photons. It confines excitation to the focus and often images deeper tissue with less out-of-focus photobleaching.
Confocal microscope patent: Marvin Minsky’s 1957 patent describing a microscope that uses conjugate apertures to reject out-of-focus light. It records the original design principle underlying confocal microscopy.
Optical resolution: The ability of an imaging system to distinguish nearby details as separate. A pinhole improves axial discrimination but does not eliminate diffraction limits.

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