Submicron reflection confocal microscope with a multimode fiber output

Summary form only given.Among modern optical imaging techniques, confocal microscopy has been extensively studied and applied to many practical fields ranging from biology to materials science. It provides sharp, high-magnification imaging of thick specimens by rejection of out-of-focus information. Further research efforts are focused on improvement the resolving power. Besides conventional pinhole-based confocal systems, a fiber-optic approach is also applied to improve the spatial resolution. In this case, the light efficiency is lower because small-core single-mode fibers are basically used for pinhole detection. Moreover, a reflection-type confocal microscope represents an attractive confocal configuration for axial resolution improvement.