THREE-DIMENSIONAL POSITION TRACKING METHOD FOR SINGLE PARTICLES

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a confocal microscopic system, capable of tracking the motion of particles existing in three-dimensional space constituted by x, y and z coordinate system in real time, and to provide an image processing method.;SOLUTION: In a confocal microscope, a piezoelectric actuator having the high viscous drag of a driving part is used to accelerate the damping of overshoot at the stepwise moving an objective. By means of such a technique, a focus is moved other than the photographic time of a video frame, and it is fixed within the photographic time, whereby a distinct two-dimensional section is acquired at a high speed, and then the observation of the three-dimensional image in real time is realized. By successively approximating the image of the particle existing in the three-dimensional space, with a three-dimensional Gaussian function and obtaining the position of the center of gravity of the particle, the particles moving in the three-dimensional space are tracked in real time.;COPYRIGHT: (C)2006,JPO&NCIPI