CONFOCAL LASER-INDUCED ABSORPTION MICROSCOPE

A new laser scanning microscope is proposed for imaging a three-dimensional absorption structure of a sample. The microscope is based on a confocal system built with excitation and absorption-monitoring lasers. The excitation laser produces excited molecules, and the absorption-monitoring laser probes their transient absorption. A three-dimensional optical transfer function of the microscope is theoretically derived to demonstrate a tomographic imaging capability. The spatial frequency cutoff is confirmed to be independent of the detector size. An experimental result is shown to verify the depth discrimination property.