Patent ID: 7601938

Claim:
A system for generating a digital image, comprising: a sensor having a plurality of pixels to generate an image for the optical system; an object plane for positioning therein one or more items under microscopic examination; and optical media for imaging an object, wherein the optical media defines an image plane, to scale the pixels and to project virtually-reduced pixels in the image plane in accordance with at least one of the following criteria: (a) the individual virtually-reduced pixels are about a size of a diffraction-limited parameter associated with the optical media; (b) the individual virtually-reduced pixels are a size of at minimum 0.1% to at maximum about the same size as a diffraction-limited parameter associated with the optical media; or (c) a diffraction-limited parameter associated with the optical media is a size of at minimum 0.1% and at maximum about the same size of the individual virtually-reduced pixels; wherein the optical media is associated with the sensor; the optical media defines in the object plane one or more of a Blur-circle, an Airy disk, and a diffraction-limited spot and one or more of a Blur-circle, an Airy disk, and diffraction-limited spot is one or more of matched, unit-mapped, correlated with the pixels; and the optical media defines that a Modulation Transfer Function of the sensor can be matched to Modulation Transfer Function of the object plane.