US Patent 7817269 High resolution optical microscopy featuring fluorescence transient measurement

According to the invention, an excitation layer is focused into a sample and switched on suddenly in order to improve the microscopic resolution; the history of the resulting fluorescence transient is detected and imperatively depending on the excitation intensity, wherein different patterns for the history of different transients are determined for individual excitation intensity values and are matched with the measured transient and the amplitude of the pattern matching the excitation power in the focus is determined and used as a pixel value and the sample scanned in this manner, whereby the spatial resolution is improved to levels lying below the Abbe limit by evaluating the transient.