Appeal No. 1999-0832 Page 2
Application No. 08/147,793
understanding of the invention can be derived from a reading
of exemplary claim 1, which is reproduced as follows:
1. An optical imaging system illumination apparatus for
providing a variable dark-field image wherein features of an
object appear to be light and a background appears to be dark
and whereby the light from said object of the image passes
freely through an optical discriminator and into a pupil and
light from a source, said source appearing in a field-of-view
of imaging optics, is blocked at a discriminator optic and
does not pass into the pupil of the imaging optics; the
apparatus comprising:
a) an illumination source, which produces polarized light
that propagates as a beam substantially along an optic axis;
b) the optical axis, which defines an axis of symmetry
for the cylindrically symmetric optics which include special
cases of spherically symmetric optics, whereby a beam of light
from said light source propagates away from a light source
along the axis;
c) an object volume, which is symmetric about said
optical axis having a peripheries defined by extent of the
beam of light and the limits of the field of view of;
d) imaging optics, which produce an image in an image
volume of an object in said object volume which has a light
field emanating therefrom;
e) a pupil aperture, symmetric about the optic axis
between the object volume and the imaging optics;
f) a polarization analyzer optic, symmetric about the
optic axis between the object volume and the imaging optics;
and
g) a detector, in the image volume of said imaging
optics.
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