The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 22, 2002
Filed:
Jul. 06, 2000
Yasutada Miura, Hachioji, JP;
Nahoko Hisata, Hino, JP;
Olympus Optical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, JP;
Abstract
A confocal microscope has a light source, an optical system, a rotating disk, an image capturing device such as a CCD camera, a subtracting section, a detector, and an adjusting device. The rotating disk has a transparent portion transmitting a light beam emitted from a light source and a light-permeable portion which includes transparent and opaque areas. The image capturing device alternately captures a composite image and a bright field image while the rotating disk is rotating. A subtracting section performs subtraction between a newest captured image and a last captured image, whenever a newest captured image is captured, so as to extract the confocal image. The detector detects at least once whether the captured image is the composite image or the bright field image. The adjusting device adjusts the plus/minus sign of the confocal image on the basis of a result detected by the detector. The confocal microscope can extract the confocal image by performing subtraction between the newest captured image and the last captured image. Thus, whenever image data is captured, the newest confocal image is displayed. The image display rate is more than twice of that of the conventional art (half of the capturing rate), so that a nearly real-time confocal image can be obtained.