THE EXPERIMENTAL EFFECT OF DETECTOR SIZE ON CONFOCAL LATERAL RESOLUTION

The lateral resolution of a scanning-spot microscope has been measured as the product of the pin-hole size and lens numerical aperture of the detector approaches the confocal limit. The resolution follows an earlier prediction, improving approximately 30% in going from that of a conventional scanning-spot or broad-viewing-area microscope to that of a fully confocal microscope. The discrepancy between the data and the theoretical curve can be attributed to lens apodization arising from the use of multi-element thick lenses and a non-ideal, truncated Gaussian beam profile.