Patent ID: 7592582

Claim:
A confocal scanner, comprising: a microlens disk; an optical fiber for guiding excitation light, wherein a beam of excitation light outgoing from an emission end of the optical fiber has a beam spread angle that is predetermined based on a type of optical fiber; a beam spread angle adjusting means for receiving the beam outgoing from the emission end of the optical fiber and adjusting the beam spread angle of the received beam; a collimator lens for receiving a beam having the adjusted beam spread angle from the beam spread angle adjusting means and converting the received beam having the adjusted spread angle into the collimated beam before falling on the microlens disk, wherein the beam spread angle adjusting means is adapted to receive beams emitted from different types of optical fibers that respectively emit beams having different beam spread angles, and the beam spread angle adjusting means adjusts the beam spread angle of respective beams emitted from the different types of optical fibers such that the different beam spread angles are each converted to the same beam spread angle at an optical focusing point on an emission side of the beam spread angle adjusting means and are incident to the collimator lens, and wherein the beam spread angle adjusting means operates such that an optical focusing point on an incident side of the beam spread angle adjusting means and an optical focusing point on an emission side of the beam spread angle adjusting means are fixed at respective predetermined positions, the predetermined positions being the same for each of the different types of optical fibers.