Presented in Figure 1 is a schemati

Presented in Figure 1 is a schematic diagram of the basic optical configuration in Yokogawa scanning units. Laser light introduced into the scanner through a single mode optical fiber is shaped by a specialized lens to adjust the intensity distribution of the Gaussian beam towards the center and is then projected onto the microlens disk with a collimating lens (illustrated as green light). Individual microlens elements gather a substantial amount of the incoming light (see Figure 2) and focus it through the dichromatic beamsplitter onto an area covering approximately 1,000 pinholes on the lower Nipkow disk (an area spanning 7 x 10 millimeters). The pinhole spiral patterns are designed so that a single image is created with each 30-degree rotation of the disk. Because the radial scan pitch between adjacent spirals is organized into a pattern that slightly offsets adjoining pinholes, the specimen is fully raster-scanned by partially overlapping images of the pinholes.