Optical fibre confocal imager with variable near-confocal control

A confocal imaging system comprising:

• a light source for supply of a light beam;
• light focusing means for focusing light from the beam onto a point observational field on or within an object and for receiving object emanated light emanating from the vicinity of the point observational field;
• a detector for detecting the object emanated light;
• scanning means operable to cause relative movement between the object and the point observational field such that the point observational field scans over a focal plane transverse to an optical axis of the imaging system;
• and
• flexible optical transmission means for transmitting the source light beam from the light source to the light focusing means and for transmitting the object emanated light to the detector, and having light separator means to separate the object emanated light from the light beam for passing to the detector and confocal optical transmission means to transmit the object emanated light emerging only from the point observational field;
• wherein the optical transmission means further comprises
• (i) flexible near confocal optical transmission means having a light collection end adjacent to a light collection end of the confocal optical transmission means and adapted to transmit only near confocal light emerging from points in the object located within a range of distances above and below the focal plane in such a manner that a selected portion of the near confocal light emerging from greater than a corresponding selected distance within said range is substantially separable from the remainder;
• (ii) an exit region for exit of at least a portion of said near confocal light from the flexible near confocal optical transmission means;
• and wherein there is further provided variable selection means to define said selected portion and exclude it from the detector.