Patent ID: 8773760

Claim:
A confocal microscope comprising: a light source providing a first illumination beam travelling in a forward direction; a device that modulates the first illumination beam to provide a substantially one dimensional array of two or more illumination beams spread along a first dimension; optics that focus said array of two or more illumination beams to an object plane in an object; a first mechanism to scan light from said first illumination beam along a second dimension transverse to the first dimension before light from said first illumination beam reaches the object plane, wherein said first mechanism or said device causes light from said first illumination beam to scan along the first dimension, so that said array of two or more illumination beams scans across the object plane along said first and second dimensions; and a confocal aperture array transmitting light caused by interaction of the array of two or more illumination beams and the object in the reverse direction in a manner so that the transmitted light caused by the interaction matches a profile of the said array of two or more illumination beams.