Pin-hole issue in disk vs. line scanning confocal

Posted by O'Malley, Donald on
URL: http://confocal-microscopy-list.275.s1.nabble.com/Pin-hole-issue-in-disk-vs-line-scanning-confocal-tp7567859.html

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The point was made that 5 mW is a lot of laser power.  With live specimens it is extremely useful to trade off some optical sectioning by gradually opening the "pinhole" aperture-- this allows one to operate at much lower light intensities, and can easily be done in the course of live imaging experiments with most line-scanning confocals (i.e. aperture can be adjusted without disturbing the specimen on the microscope stage).   With the fixed pinhole size of disk scanners, which are designed to maximize spatial resolution, a large laser power is required, which is not ideal for extended live cell/animal imaging experiments.

My question is if commercial disk scanners have a set of disks allowing one to switch to larger apertures, and if this trade-off can be made "on-line", i.e. in between successive acquisitions on a sample?  I would especially appreciate a pointer to any peer-reviewed publications on this topic.

Best Regards,
Don

Don O'Malley
Assoc. Professor
Dept. Biology
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617-373-2284