Method and apparatus for rapid depth-scanning in laser imaging
AssigneeFluorescence Microscopy Business Unit (FMBU) of Bruker Nano Surfaces Division
InventorsSelcuk Akturk, Jimmy Fong, Bill Vogt
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Abstract
Disclosed herein is a method and apparatus for rapid depth-scanning in laser imaging. The method comprises masking selected regions of a laser beam incident on a Bessel-beam-forming optical system to generate line foci with controllable depths and lengths. The use of a digital micromirror device (DMD) as the masking device enables rapid (multi kHz rate) modification of the input mask, and thereby rapidly varying the length and axial location of a subsection of typical Bessel beam region in a sample.
Claims22
An apparatus for rapid depth-scanning in laser imaging or photostimulation, comprising:
- a laser source dimensioned and configured to generate an input laser beam;
- a masking device dimensioned and configured to mask desired patterns over the input laser beam to yield a masked laser beam;
- a beam-shaping element to convert the masked laser beam to a beam with controlled position and length of line focus;
- a scanning microscope dimensioned and configured to transfer the beam resulted from the beam-shaping element to a focal plane of a microscope objective lens.
A method for rapid depth-scanning in laser imaging or photostimulation, comprising:
- (a) generating an input laser beam;
- (b) masking a desired pattern over the input laser beam to yield a masked laser beam;
- (c) converting the masked laser beam to a beam with controlled position and length of line focus;
- (d) transferring the beam of step (c) to a focal plane of a microscope objective lens;
- and
- (e) collecting fluorescence signal from a sample illuminated with the beam of step (d).
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.