Patent ID: 7812956

Claim:
An apparatus for collecting optical data pertaining to one or more characteristics of a sample, the apparatus comprising: a light source; one or more illumination optical elements configured to direct a light beam from the light source and to focus onto the sample close to the light beam's diffraction limit, the one or more illumination optical elements comprising a scanner configured to move the light beam relative to at least one illumination optical element and to scan close to the diffraction limit across the sample in a straight line; one or more collection optical elements configured to collect light from the sample across a scan of the light beam and to transmit the collected light from across the scan to two or more detectors offset from one another with respect to a path configured to collect the light from the sample and configured to output a single non-spatially resolved signal without the collection light being incident to the one or more illumination optical elements, wherein none of the one or more collection optical elements are included among the one or more illumination optical elements, wherein each of the two or more detectors is positioned to capture light being emitted from a different vertical depth within the sample; and a device forming an aperture that limits detection of light from the sample to light associated with a limited vertical depth within the sample, wherein the device is one of the collection optical elements.