light u2014 e g a pulsed laser diode p max 1 mw t fwhm 50 ps ldh 405 working with 40 mhz repetition rate with pdl 800 b pulsed laser diode driver from picoquant gmbh u2014 an excitation light pattern generating device 16 an imaging sensor 18 e g colour cdd array a photodetector 20 and a computer 22 light emitted by the light source 14 is collected by conditioning optics 24 and falls on the excitation light pattern generating device 16 which is advantageously formed by a digital micromirror device dmd with appropriate control electronics here a 0 7 xga 1024 u00d7 768 pixels dmd chip by texas instruments controllable via the computer 22 preferably conditioning optics 24 include a beam expander and anamorphic prism to condition the excitation light beam and to illuminate homogenously the dmd 16 reference 26 indicates an illumination path extending from the dmd to the sample 12 the light reflected by the dmd mirrors 16 i e the dmd image projected through the conditioning optics 28 is guided through the back illumination port of the microscope 10 and a filter cube 30 to the back surface of the sample 12 in the setup of fig1 the wide field fluorescence is transmitted by a respective high pass dichroic filter in the filter cube 30 and reflected by a tiltable mirror 31 either onto the ccd imager 18 or the photomultiplier tube 20 it shall be appreciated that the use of a dmd as spatial illuminator not only permits to produce excitation patterns but also when properly programmed allows raster type point by point scanning raster scanning.