R. Gauderon et Cjr. Sheppard, Effect of a finite-size pinhole on noise performance in single-, two-, andthree-photon confocal fluorescence microscopy, APPL OPTICS, 38(16), 1999, pp. 3562-3565
It is known that signal level in single-, two- and three-photon confocal fl
uorescence microscopy increases with the size of the detector. Here we eval
uate the signal-to-noise and the signal-to-background criteria for these mi
croscopes. We investigate the effect of pinhole size on their ability to de
tect a weakly fluorescent point object in the presence of a uniformly fluor
escence background. Numerical results based on a paraxial approximation the
ory show that optimization of these criteria gives an optimal value for pin
hole size, which results in an improved imaging performance. The resulting
improvement in noise performance, compared with the use of a large detector
, is greater for three-photon than for two-photon confocal fluorescence mic
roscopes. (C) 1999 Optical Society of America. OCIS codes: 110.1220, 110.42
80, 180.1790, 180.2520.