Patent ID: 8503076

Claim:
A confocal line scanning microscope comprising: a light source for illuminating a sample; a line scanning device for scanning the sample with a light beam emitted by the light source by generating and scanning an excitation light beam having a linear cross-section; a light detector that is arranged in the microscope such that it detects light that is at least one of emitted, transmitted and reflected by the sample and scans one line of a sample at a time whereby an entire image line of the sample can be read out in parallel, said light detector comprising a line array of avalanche semiconductor detectors detecting all points on this line simultaneously; and an electronic trigger circuit that is adapted to operate the avalanche semiconductor detectors in at least one of a Geiger mode with internal charge amplification and in a linear mode, the trigger circuit further comprising a parallel counter, wherein the parallel counter is designed to read out in parallel light pulses detected by the avalanche semiconductor detectors and the parallel counter is adapted to accumulate the light pulses detected by the avalanche semiconductor detectors during a preset counting time.