Optical transfer functions of 4Pi confocal microscopes: theory and experiment.

We measure the point-spread function in the two main configurations of 4Pi confocal microscopy as well as in the traditional confocal arrangement and derive the optical transfer functions from the experimental data. The optical transfer functions are in good agreement with their theoretical counterparts. We find a 3.5- to 5-fold increased axial bandwidth of the 4Pi confocal microscope and hence confirm the enhanced spatial-frequency content of 4Pi images.