ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 11 -- United States Patent no. 12,546,985, issued on Feb. 10, was assigned to Harbin Institute of Technology (Harbin, China).

"Dark-field confocal microscopy measurement apparatus and method based on aperture scanning of vortex illumination" was invented by Jian Liu (Harbin, China), Chenguang Liu (Harbin, China), Zijie Hua (Harbin, China) and Kang Gu (Harbin, China).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "This application relates to the technical field of optical precision measurement and discloses a dark-field confocal microscopy measurement apparatus and method based on aperture scanning of vortex illumination. The apparatus includes a vortex illumination generation module, a vo...