title: Optical-sectioning improvement in two-color excitation scanning microscopy.
abstract: We present a new beam-shaping technique for two-color excitation fluorescence microscopy. We show that by simply inserting a properly designed shaded-ring filter in the illumination beam of smaller wavelength, it is possible to improve the effective optical sectioning capacity of such microscopes by 23%. Such an improvement is obtained at the expense of only a very small increasing of the overall energy in the point-spread-function sidelobes. The performance of this technique is illustrated by a numerical imaging simulation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Optics, University of Valencia, E46100 Burjassot, Spain.
authors.forename: Cristina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ibáñez-López
authors.forename: Isabel
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Escobar
authors.forename: Genaro
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Saavedra
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Martínez-Corral
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D005374:Filtration / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation; D021621:Imaging, Three-Dimensional / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods; D018613:Microscopy, Confocal / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D036641:Microscopy, Fluorescence, Multiphoton / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods