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Abstract
We have succeeded in isolating radiation from single rat rod receptors at both the near- and far-field planes, and have held them within the near-field mask apertures for recording purposes for a reasonable length of time. This is an important requirement for the end-on microspectrophotometry work projected for the instrument described. We have shown that under reverse path illumination, single rat rods emit radiation into very tight cone angles. Larger groups of rods are also directionally selective, but much less so. In conjunction with the reciprocity theorem of optics, this implies that single rat rodsare highly directionally transmissive to normal illumination and that groups of rods are also directionally transmissive, but much less so than single rods. A comparison with human scotopic Stiles-Crawford curves has been made.