Patent ID: 7385709

Claim:
A method of generating an optically sectioned image of a specimen comprising the steps of: illuminating the specimen with a temporally modulating, illumination pattern; imaging said specimen on a conjugate image plane; acquiring a plurality of signals at respective positions on said image plane, each signal corresponding to the incident light intensity at that position and having an oscillatory component caused by the modulation of the illumination pattern; filtering each acquired signal to isolate the oscillatory component therefrom, measuring a characteristic of the oscillatory component of each of the signals; and generating an optically sectioned image of the specimen by combining the measured characteristics in their relative positions; wherein the measuring and filtering steps are performed by a plurality of signal processors, each signal processor having a feedback loop provided by an amplifier, a low-pass filter and a current source, the feedback loop rejecting a time-invariant component of the respective acquired signal and amplifying the oscillatory component of that signal.