Quantitative light microscope using a solid state detector in the primary image plane

Claim 1

A solid state microscope comprising: a light source with a condensor and diffusion filter; a movable stage to provide X, Y and Z displacements to position and scan an object under the microscope; an objective being highly corrected for abberations with a large numerical aperture and an ultrawide flat field to produce and project magnified images of the object onto a two dimensional solid state image sensor positioned in the primary image plane of the objective, the image sensor having a large sensing area with a high pixel density and generating signals corresponding to the spatial distribution of the brightness levels of the images; an analog-to-digital converter associated with the solid state image sensor to process and convert the signals of the solid state image sensor to provide real-time digital images of the object; calibration and correction means coupled to said analog-to-digital converter for enhancement of the real-time digital images to account for optical and detection induced distortions; a frame memory coupled to said calibration and correction means into which the real-time digital images are continuously downloaded; image processors associated with the frame memory for processing the real-time digital images into a display image; and display means coupled to the image processors for displaying the display image generated by the image processors.

Claim 9

A method of scanning an object using a solid state microscope comprising: a light source with a condensor and a diffusion filter; a moveable stage to provide X, Y and Z displacements to position and scan an object under the microscope; an objective being highly corrected for abberations with a large numerical aperture and an ultrawide flat field to produce and project magnified images of the object onto a two-dimensional solid state image sensor positioned in the primary image plane of the objective, the image sensor having a large sensing area with a high pixel density and generating signals corresponding to the spatial distribution of the brightness levels of the images; an analog-to-digital converter associated with the solid state image sensor to process and convert the signals of the solid state image sensor to provide real-time digital images of the object; calibration and correction means coupled to said analog-to-digital converter for enhancement of the real-time digital images to account for optical and detection induced distortions; a frame memory coupled to said calibration and correction means into which the real-time digital images are continuously downloaded; image processors associated with the frame memory for processing the real-time digital images into a display image; and display means coupled to the image processors for displaying the display image generated by the image processors; a prism element between the solid state image sensor and the moveable stage; the method being used to obtain spectral information about an object and the method comprising: projecting an image of the object onto the prism, the prism allowing only a single scanline to be transmitted to the image sensor, this single scanline being broken into spectral lines of different wavelengths by the prism; positioning the image sensor such that different spectral lines are projected onto different rows of detectors of the solid state image sensor; digitizing and storing the different spectral lines in frame memory; moving the stage to scan the next line of the object; and repeating the above steps until the entire object has been scanned to create sets of spectral lines of different wavelengths.

Claim 10

A method of scanning an object using a solid state microscope comprising: a light source with a condensor and a diffusion filter; a moveable stage to provide X, Y and Z displacements to position and scan an object under the microscope; an objective being highly corrected for abberations with a large numerical aperture and an ultrawide flat field to produce and project magnified images of the object onto a two-dimensional solid state image sensor positioned in the primary image plane of the objective, the image sensor having a large sensing area with a high pixel density and generating signals corresponding to the spatial distribution of the brightness levels of the images; an analog-to-digital converter associated with the solid state image sensor to process and convert the signals of the solid state image sensor to provide real-time digital images of the object; calibration and correction means coupled to said analog-to-digital converter for enhancement of the real-time digital images to account for optical and detection induced distortions; a frame memory coupled to said calibration and correction means into which the real-time digital images are continuously downloaded; image processors associated with the frame memory for processing the real-time digital images into a display image; and display means coupled to the image processors for displaying the display image generated by the image processors; a prism element between the solid state image sensor and the moveable stage; the method being used to obtain spectral information about an object and the method comprising: projecting an image of the object onto the prism, the prism allowing only a single scanline to be transmitted to the image sensor, this single scanline being broken into spectral lines of different wavelengths by the prism; positioning the image sensor such that different spectral lines are projected onto different rows of detectors of the solid state image sensor; digitizing and storing the different spectral lines in frame memory; moving the stage to scan the next line of the object; and repeating the above steps until the entire object has been scanned to create sets of spectral lines of different wavelengths.