1. An optical instrument that uses a lens, or a combination of lenses, to produce magnified images of small objects, especially of objects too small to be seen by the unaided eye.
2. An instrument; such as, an electron microscope, that uses electronic or other processes to magnify objects.
3. A device that uses a lens or system of lenses to produce a greatly magnified image of an object.

An optical microscope uses transmitted or reflected light to obtain the image. An electron microscope uses a beam of electrons and a system of electron-focusing lenses to obtain images.

A device in which the object being studied is scanned with sound waves and its image is reconstructed with light waves: In the field of medical surgery, the development of the acoustic microscope was praised as a break through innovation for noninvasive exploratory surgery.

1. A device which uses electrons, generally focused by electron lenses, to magnify tiny objects onto a fluorescent screen or photographic plate.

It provides much greater plowers of magnification than an optical microscope; that is, up to 1,000,000 times actual size without loss of sharpness and degree of contrast in the image.

2. An electronic instrument that scans cell and tissue sections with a beam of electrons instead of visible light.

The specimen is stained with electron-opaque dyes and with its high magnification power, it creates an image that can be photographed or viewed on a florescent screen.

3. A device for directing streams of electrons by means of electric and magnetic fields in a manner similar to the direction of visible light rays by means of glass lenses in an ordinary microscope.

Since electrons carry waves of much smaller wavelengths than light waves, correspondingly greater magnifications can be obtained.

The electron microscope will resolve details from 1,000 to 10,000 times finer than the optical microscope and images can be studied on a fluorescent screen or recorded photographically.

An instrument similar to an electron microscope in that a beam of electrons is used to scan the surface of a specimen.

The beam is moved in a point-to-point manner over the surface of the specimen and these electrons are deflected collected, accelerated, and directed against a scintillator.

The large number of photons that are created are converted into an electric signal which, in turn, modulates the beam scanning the surface of the specimen.

A microscope in which atoms are ionized by an electric field near a sharp tip.

The field then forces the ions to a fluorescent screen, which shows an enlarged image of the tip, and individual atoms are made visible.

1. A powerful type of microscope that uses a beam of protons, giving high resolution and sharp contrast.
2. An instrument that uses protons instead of electrons to form the image of minute or tiny objects for viewing.