Introduction to confocal microscopy.
Conventional microscopy requires viewing a thin cut "section" of fixed or frozen tissue, and therefore cannot be used to view thick tissue samples or for in vivo investigations. In vivo microscopy requires a virtual, rather than a physical, section of the specimen. Confocal microscopy, developed and patented by Marvin Minsky in 1955, uses optical imaging to create a virtual slice or plane, many micrometers deep, within the tissue. It provides very high quality images with fine detail and more contrast than conventional microscopy. In addition, the imaging technique allows for reconstruction of virtual 3 dimensional (3 D) images of the tissue when multiple sections are combined.
The Journal of investigative dermatology