adjective

• 1Having a common focus or foci.

  ‘confocal ellipses’

  More example sentences

  • ‘Experimental traces used to compare to model simulations were obtained using a confocal spot detection methodology, described in detail previously.’
  • ‘Here we present the application of confocal spot detection combined with fluorescence fluctuation analysis.’
  • ‘In a multicolor confocal setup, optimal alignment is essential to guarantee maximal overlap of all detection volume elements in the different spectral ranges.’
  • ‘This allowed us to condense several data sets taken on the same protein at the same excitation wavelength, but with different confocal geometries, into a single curve.’
  • ‘A single confocal section of pea nuclei is shown.’

  1. 1.1Denoting or using a microscope whose imaging system only collects light from a small spot on the specimen, giving greater resolution.
     ‘The boundary could be inspected during the experiment from the transmission image produced by the confocal microscope.’
     More example sentences

     • ‘He explains that once researchers learned how to mark the prion proteins, they added them to a culture of nerve cells and then began watching and taking photo images with a confocal microscope.’
     • ‘In a confocal microscope, light passes through a pinhole to eliminate photons from outside the image plane.’
     • ‘The component whose diffusion is to be observed must be tagged with a fluorophore so that it can be imaged in the confocal microscope.’
     • ‘The images were recorded in a confocal microscope.’