FLUORESCENT IMAGE-FORMATION IN THE FIBEROPTIC CONFOCAL SCANNING MICROSCOPE

Reported in this paper are theoretical studies on two-dimensional and three-dimensional image formation with fluorescent objects in a fibre-optical confocal scanning microscope. An effective point spread function is introduced to derive the two- and three-dimensional optical transfer functions. It is found that, unlike confocal fluorescence microscopes with a finite circular detector, there is no missing cone of spatial frequencies, and no negative tail in the transfer function. The effect of the system parameters on the optical sectioning property is also investigated.