Concepedia

Tandem-Scanning Reflected-Light Microscope*

Mojmír Petráň, M Hadravský, Marcel Egger, Róbert Galambos

Journal of the Optical Society of America · 1968 · 489 citations · 1 references

Concepts

TL;DR

Reflected‑light microscopy of semitransparent tissues suffers from low contrast and scattering. The microscope scans the object and image planes together, using a rotating disk with matching holes that permits only light reflected from the object plane to reach the image, thereby improving image quality. The resulting images show improved contrast and sharpness compared to conventional reflected‑light microscopy.

Abstract

Reflected-light microscopy of semitransparent material, such as unstained nervous tissue, is usually unsatisfactory because of low contrast and light scattering. In a new microscope both the object plane and the image plane were scanned in tandem so that only light reflected from the object plane was included in the image. The object was illuminated with nearly incoherent light passing through holes in one side of a rotating scanning disk (Nipkow wheel) which was imaged by the objective into the object plane. Reflected-light images of these spots were conducted to the opposite side of the same disk. Light could pass from the source to the object plane, and from the object to the image plane, only through optically congruent holes on opposite side of the rotating disk. The image obtained had better contrast and sharpness for some semitransparent material than possible in usual reflected-light microscopy.

References

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