Resolution and contrast in confocal optical scanning microscopes

A theoretical study is made of a simple method of obstructing an amplitude pupil which results in improved microscope resolution with only a little degradation of the image contrast. Using a confocal scanning optical microscope the resultant point spread function is calculated, from which the image of a point object is deduced. The calculations are made for two different apertures — the first has four-fold symmetry and the second has eight-fold symmetry — and are compared with full circular and annular apertures.