Patent 7312922 was granted and assigned to Olympus Group on December, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A disk unit for a confocal microscope has a rotary disk having many confocal openings, a rotary drive portion, which rotates the rotary disk, a holding member, which holds the rotary disk and the rotary drive portion, a drive portion, which is allowed to insert into and remove from an optical axis the rotary disk, and a disk replacement mechanism, which allows the rotary disk to be attached to and detached from the rotary drive portion.