US 12,204,082 B2
Light microscope with reconfigurable sensor array
Tiemo Anhut, Jena (DE); Daniel Schwedt, Jena (DE); Ivan Michel Antolovic, Lausanne (CH); Claudio Bruschini, Villars-sous-Yens (CH); and Edoardo Charbon, Jouxtens-Mezery (CH)
Assigned to Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Jena (DE); and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne (CH)
Appl. No. 17/602,086
Filed by Carl Zeiss Microscopy GmbH, Jena (DE); and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Lausanne (CH)
PCT Filed Apr. 9, 2019, PCT No. PCT/EP2019/058991
§ 371(c)(1), (2) Date Oct. 7, 2021,
PCT Pub. No. WO2020/207571, PCT Pub. Date Oct. 15, 2020.
Prior Publication US 2022/0206275 A1, Jun. 30, 2022
Int. Cl. G02B 21/00 (2006.01); G01J 1/44 (2006.01); G01N 21/64 (2006.01); G02B 21/02 (2006.01); G02B 21/08 (2006.01)
CPC G02B 21/008 (2013.01) [G01J 1/44 (2013.01); G01N 21/6458 (2013.01); G02B 21/0032 (2013.01); G02B 21/0036 (2013.01); G02B 21/0076 (2013.01); G02B 21/02 (2013.01); G02B 21/082 (2013.01); G01J 2001/442 (2013.01)] 20 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A light microscope comprising:
a light source for illuminating a specimen;
a sensor array including photon-counting detector elements for measuring detection light coming from the specimen; and
a control device for controlling the sensor array, wherein the control device or parts of the control device and the sensor array are built in the same integrated circuit, with multi-bit counters formed as on-chip multi-bit counters;
wherein
the control device is configured for flexibly binning the photon-counting detector elements into one or more super-pixels, wherein outputs of all photon-counting detector elements binned into the same super-pixel are combined into a common output line:
the control device is configured to assign a respective one of the multi-bit counters to each super-pixel, wherein each of the multi-bit counters outputs a cumulative number indicative of counted photons by all photon-counting detector elements binned into the respective super-pixel.