Apparatus for structured illumination of a specimen
AssigneePerkinElmer Cellular Technologies Germany GmbH
InventorsRoland Stange, Stefan Lüpke
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Abstract
An apparatus for structured illumination of a specimen comprises an illumination device for generating illumination beams. The illumination beams are incident on a mask device. Openings provided in the mask device serve for generating a mask image. The mask image is imaged within the specimen with the aid of an objective. Detection beams generated by the specimen are captured by a detection device. For increasing the intensity of the observation beams entering the specimen, those beams which do not pass through the openings, are collected with the aid of a beam collector and guided back to the mask device.
Claims16
An apparatus for structured illumination of a specimen, comprising:
- an illumination device to generate illumination beams;
- a mask device illuminated by the illumination beams, said mask device being provided with openings to generate a mask image, and a mask layer of said mask device being planar and at least partially reflective;
- an objective device to image said mask image in the specimen;
- a detection device for detecting detection beams issuing from the specimen;
- and
- a beam splitter configured to reflect the illumination beams toward the specimen and to permit passage of the detection beams issuing from the specimen, or vice versa,
- wherein
- a beam collector by which those illumination beams which have not passed through an opening of the mask device are reflected from the mask layer of the mask device toward the beam collector and again guided toward the mask device;
- and
- the beam splitter comprises a wall of the beam collector, or the beam collector forms a reflection chamber with the mask layer of the mask device forming an inner side of the reflection chamber, or both.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.