Patent ID: 8184367

Claim:
An optical system comprising: a microscope objective that includes a series of lenses and a dynamically focused lens, the series of lenses configured to narrow a beam of light entering the microscope objective so that light can be focused by the dynamically focused lens, and the dynamically focused lens configured to variably change focal length without axial translation to focus light on a material at an axial depth; a scanning element configured to laterally scan the material to focus light on the material at points that are laterally adjacent the axial depth; a field lens adjacent the series of lenses configured to create an image from light emerging from the series of lenses; scan optics adjacent the scanning element configured to collimate light traveling toward the scanning element; a microlenslet array between the field lens and the scan optics configured to place the image formed by the field lens at the focal plane of the scan optics; and a processing system configured to automatically control both the dynamically focused lens and the scanning element to sequentially perform lateral scans of the material at multiple axial depths.