Patent ID: 8659824
Filing Date: 2014-02-25
Classification: G02B

Abstract:
1. A laser microscope comprising: an objective lens that radiates a laser beam emitted from a laser light source onto a specimen; a stimulation optical system having a phase-modulating spatial light modulator that is located at a position optically conjugate with a pupil position of the objective lens and modulates the phase of the laser beam emitted from the laser light source; an observation optical system having a scanning unit that scans the laser beam emitted from the laser light source, serving as observation illuminating light, across the specimen and a detecting unit that detects the observation light coming from the specimen and collected by the objective lens; an image forming unit that forms a three-dimensional image of the specimen from observation images of different observation planes in the optical axis direction, acquired by the observation optical system; and a position setting unit that sets stimulation sites in the specimen to be irradiated with the laser beam serving as a stimulation beam by the stimulation optical system at a plurality of different positions in the optical axis direction, in the three-dimensional image formed by the image forming unit, wherein the spatial light modulator modulates the laser beam such that the stimulation sites set by the position setting unit are irradiated with the laser beam.