Abstract

A line-shaped synthetic pinhole was introduced to reduce the processing time of the subtraction method, which was a technique for enhancing the axial resolution of a confocal microscope using a CCD array as a detector. It was experimentally confirmed that the axial resolution could be enhanced to a nearly same level as that of a square-shaped synthetic pinhole, but the processing time could be reduced to less than 12% compared to the square-shaped synthetic pinhole.

© 2014 Optical Society of America