APPARATUS AND METHOD FOR FOCUS CONTROL OF MICROSCOPE WITH DIGITAL IMAGING, IN PARTICULAR CONFOCAL MICROSCOPE

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a focus controller which is applicable to a digital image type microscope, in particular a confocal microscope, and can apply a digital image forming method only by slightly adding an adjusting operation and, the application of which to defocusing is limited to the range of about 5 to 8×λ/NA2 in the confocal microscope. SOLUTION: This focus controller has a transparent optical element installed so as to be turnable, is disposed in front of a main beam splitter installed within a parallel area of an illumination optical path and also in the optical path in a microscope with a widely known structure records an image necessary for focus control when the transparent optical element is inclined at the angle of +α or -α, shifts the image in the direction of light movement in a pixel unit, confirms and checks correlation of image contents with the shifting, and uses shift width Δs in the optimum correlation as the measure of focusing or defocusing at that time.