A single-pinhole confocal laser scanning microscope for 3-D imaging of biostructures

Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) is a powerful three-dimensional (3-D) tool at the microscopic level, both for functional and for structural studies. The confocal microscope provides a practical and well-established method for obtaining microscopic volume imaging. It has become more and more evident that it permits one to obtain a large amount of information on biological systems in terms of their (slow) dynamics and 3-D structure. Moreover, when linked to bioimage-oriented interfaces, CLSM adds the ability to examine the spatial distribution and the temporal behaviour of specific cellular components to the already intriguing properties of confocal imaging. In this article, we discuss a new ultracompact confocal microscope based on a single-pinhole optical architecture.