Abstract

The confocal scanning imaging technique offers significant advantages over conventional imagery, including superior resolution and rejection of scattered light. We describe a non-scanning system that achieves results essentially equivalent to those of confocal scanning. The basic theory of the process is developed, and the theoretical performance is compared with that of conventional confocal scanning. Such factors as signal to noise ratio, scattered light rejection, lateral resolution, depth resolution, and light utilization efficiency are considered. The practical advantages of eliminating the need for synchronized scanning by the illuminating beam and by the image sensing detector are compared with the complications arising from two beam interferometry. Experimental results demonstrate the ideas. In particular, we demonstrate the capability of the non-scanning confocal technique for imaging objects embedded in scatterers and to reject the scattered light from other depth positions.

© 1992 Optical Society of America