Resolution and optical sectioning in the confocal microscope: PROPERTIES OF THE FLUORESCENT CONFOCAL MICROSCOPE
Abstract
In this short review, we present a self-contained discussion of the image formation properties of the fluorescent confocal microscope. The optical sectioning or depth discrimination property is discussed in detail and new analytic formulae are presented, which relate the optical sectioning strength to the wavelength, numerical aperture and pinhole aperture size in a particularly simple fashion.
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A detection numerical aperture (NA) of 0.6 is used; lower NA values do not sufficiently resolve signals from adjacent voxels, whereas higher NA values introduce more significant spherical aberration with depth.
“A detection numerical aperture (NA) of 0.6 is used; lower NA values do not sufficiently resolve signals from adjacent voxels, whereas higher NA values introduce more significant spherical aberration with depth34–36.”
From Laser writing in glass for dense, fast and efficient archival data storage (2026) · cites this paper as [36]
Cites
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Self-citationConfocal and two-photon microscopy
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Two-photon excitation microscopy for the study of living cells and tissues
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Laser writing in glass for dense, fast and efficient archival data storage
Microsoft Research Project Silica Team, Allison, J., Anderson, P., Aranas, E., Assaf, Y., Black, R., Caballero, M., Canakci, B., Chattaway, J. A., Chatzieleftheriou, A., et al. (2026) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-025-10042-w · Cited by 25 · see citing works
- Authors
- WILSON, T.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- WILSON, T.
- Venue
- Journal of Microscopy
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2011-10-17
- Volume
- 244
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 113-121
- ISSN
- 0022-2720 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1560868004
- Cited by
- 237
- References
- 10
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 23 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 16 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 21 · 2020: 21 · 2019: 31 · 2018: 20 · 2017: 10 · 2016: 11 · 2015: 6 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 7
- FWCI
- 3.67
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Microscopy (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Biophysics › Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Advanced optical system design
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics › Digital Holography and Microscopy
- Keywords
- confocal microscopy, optical sectioning, depth discrimination, resolution, image formation, fluorescence microscopy, numerical aperture, pinhole aperture, wavelength dependence
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