Abstract:
A light sheet illumination microscope includes a detection optical system and an illumination optical system. The illumination optical system includes a first optical element for forming a sheet-shaped illumination beam that travels in a first direction and that has a width in a second direction that is perpendicular to both the optical axis of the detection optical system and the first direction in a specimen, and a scanner that relatively scans the specimen with the sheet-shaped illumination beam in the second direction.
Abstract:
A microscope is a microscope that switches an observation method between the bright-field observation and the fluorescence observation. The microscope includes an objective that irradiates a sample with excitation light and converts fluorescence from the sample into a parallel light flux, a beam splitter that splits fluorescence and excitation light from each other, and a collecting lens that is arranged in such a manner that it is freely set in and removed from an optical path between the beam splitter and the objective, that has a positive power, and that is set in the optical path for fluorescence observation and is removed from the optical path for bright-field observation.
Abstract:
A light sheet illumination microscope includes an illumination optical system configured to illuminate a sample from a direction substantially perpendicular to an optical axis of a detection optical system. The illumination optical system includes a first optical element configured to convert light emitted from a light source into a light sheet that forms an illumination area having a sheet shape substantially perpendicular to the optical axis of the detection optical system when the sample is irradiated with the light sheet. The illumination optical system further includes a second optical element that configured to act on the light emitted from the light source such that the light sheet is converged, diverged or diffracted in a width direction of the light sheet.
Abstract:
An object of the present invention is to obtain clear images when observing a specimen at different positions in the optical-axis direction of a detection optical system, using the sheet illumination. A fluorescence microscope of the present invention includes a sheet-illumination optical system that causes sheet-like excitation light along a plane of incidence to be incident on a specimen; an image-acquisition optical system that includes an objective lens having an optical axis intersecting the plane of incidence and that images fluorescence collected by the objective lens to obtain a fluorescence image; a driving part that moves the specimen in the optical-axis direction of the objective lens; and a positional-shift correction unit that, when a focus position of the image-acquisition optical system relative to an illumination position of the excitation light changes due to movement of the specimen in the optical-axis direction by the driving part, corrects a positional shift between the illumination position of the excitation light and the focus position of the image-acquisition optical system.