Patent ID: 7167305

Claim:
A microscope system comprising: a stage on which a specimen is placed; an image forming optical system that forms an image of the specimen placed on the stage; an image-capturing device that captures the image of the specimen formed by the image forming optical system; a focused position detection device that detects a focused position along a Z-axis for the specimen based upon the specimen image captured by the image-capturing device; and a focused position storage device that stores in memory the focused position detected by the focused position detection device, wherein: the focused position detection device sets a search range centered around the focused position stored in memory at the focused position storage device and detects the focused position anew by causing the stage and the image forming optical system to move relative to each other over the search range thus set each time a focusing operation is executed; and when the focused position of a first observation point stored in the focused position storage device is shifted from the first observation point to a second observation point, along an X-Y plane perpendicular to the Z-axis, the focused position detection device sets the search range for the second observation point based on the stored focused position of the first observation point.