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Seeing the wood for the trees

Concept of confocal microscopy, Realization of confocal microscopy

Nature Cell Biology volume 11, pages S12–S13 (2009)Cite this article

The resolution achievable with conventional microscopy can be negated by out-of-focus information. Confocal microscopy avoids this issue by restricting both the field of illumination and the light reaching the objective to a single point in the same focal plane. An image of the region of interest is then built up by raster scanning through the sample — either by moving the sample, or by moving a laser beam or pinhole disk. By excluding the out-of-focus light, the image contrast is increased and finer detail can be seen.

The initial patent for a confocal microscope was granted to Marvin Minsky — better known for his pioneering work in Artificial Intelligence — who was working at Harvard University in 1961. Shortly thereafter, Mojmir Petrán of the Charles University in Prague, Czechoslovakia, began a collaboration with David Egger and Robert Galambos at Yale University. Back home, Petrán went on to build a pocket-size pinhole scanning microscope; he then returned to Yale where, in 1967, he and Egger reported unstained images of brain and ganglion cells using reflected light. In 1981, the design of Petrán's microscope was discussed in a theoretical analysis of conventional versus confocal microscopes by Colin Sheppard and Tony Wilson, who proposed a theory on how to combine “the resolution and depth discrimination improvements of confocal microscopy with the ease of operation of the conventional microscope”.

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References

PRIMARY REFERENCES

  1. Minsky, M. Microscopy Apparatus. US Patent 3,013,467 (1961)

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  1. Senior Editor, Nature Cell Biology,

    Alison Schuldt

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Schuldt, A. Seeing the wood for the trees. Nat Cell Biol 11 (Suppl 1), S12–S13 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/ncb1946

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