Patent ID: 7130043

Claim:
A laser scanning microscope comprising: a laser output unit which is capable of outputting a laser beam and arbitrarily selecting a wavelength of the laser beam; a scanning unit which scans the laser beam output from the laser output unit over a sample having a site dyed with at least one kind of fluorescence indicator; a light detector which detects quantity of fluorescence emitted from the sample over which the laser beam is scanned; a data acquiring unit which acquires data of the fluorescence quantity detected by the light detector while varying the wavelength of the laser beam output from the laser output unit to obtain absorption wavelength spectral characteristic data of the sample from the fluorescence quantity data; and a discriminating unit which discriminates the kind of fluorescence indicator dyeing the site in accordance with scanning position information obtained by scanning the laser beam over the sample by the scanning unit and the absorption wavelength spectral characteristic data.