High-resolution confocal microscope

A microscope for high-resolution scanning microscopy of a sample, comprising:

• an illumination beam path for illuminating the sample with illumination radiation by focusing the illumination radiation to a point in or on the sample to form a diffraction-limited illumination spot having a diameter;
• an imaging beam path for diffraction-limited imaging of the point into a diffraction image image comprising a diffraction structure onto an 2D detector, the detector having pixels and a spatial resolution resolving the diffraction structure, wherein diffraction-limited imaging manner comprises a resolution limit;
• a scanning device for displacing the point relative to the sample into different scanning positions with a scanning increment less than the diameter of the illumination spot, and
• an evaluation device configured to read data from the 2D detector and to assign an actual scanning position to the data for each scanning position,
• wherein the evaluation device is further configured to generate an image of the sample from the data and from the scanning positions assigned by assigning each of the pixels of the 2D detector either to a central group located on an optical axis or to at least one further group that surrounds the central group in ring-shaped fashion, calculating a pre-processed raw image for each group, and combining and deconvoluting the pre-processed raw images to generate the image of the sample having a resolution that is increased beyond the resolution limit.