Microscopic photography of insects by Igor Siwanowicz, made with confocal laser scanning microscopy. They show damselflies’ and spiders’ eyes and rhinoceros beetles.

A conventional microscope “sees” as far into the specimen as the light can penetrate, while a confocal microscope only images one depth level at a time; a process known as optical sectioning. For opaque specimens, this is useful for surface profiling, while for non-opaque specimens, interior structures can be imaged. For interior imaging, the quality of the image is greatly enhanced over simple microscopy because image information from multiple depths in the specimen is not superimposed.

Images are acquired point-by-point and reconstructed with a computer, allowing three-dimensional reconstructions of topologically-complex objects. The specimen are prepared with fluorescent markers for better contrast.

text source: wikipedia