Recent advances in confocal and super-resolution microscopy have unveiled remarkable and unanticipated insights into the spatial organisation and molecular anatomy of bone tissue and its resident cells.  Together with the introduction of GFP technology and vital dyes, confocal microscopy has expanded beyond its once static snapshots of fluorescent cells to capturing single particle and organelle dynamics in living cells.  Osteoclasts are multinucleated cells of haematopoietic origin that are exquisitely adapted to degrade (resorb) bone. While the localisation and function of osteoclasts has long been appreciated by conventional light microscopy, fluorescence and live imaging of these cells on their native substrates is often hampered by the intrinsic auto-fluorescence of bone and limited depth-of-focus encountered when using wide-field epifluorescent systems.  Confocal microscopy overcomes these limitations by virtue of its monochromatic lasers and by focusing the field of illumination and light collected to a single point in the same focal plane.  In addition, the optical sectioning capacity of confocal microscopy enables the creation of axial section views required to resolve fine intracellular details in polarised cell types.  This presentation provides an overview of the application of confocal microscopy for fluorescence and live cell imaging of bone-resorbing osteoclasts, whose structural and functional polarity is ideal for exploiting the optical sectioning power and 3D-reconstruction capabilities of the confocal microscope, thus enabling the dynamics of bone resorption to be monitored at unprecedented resolution in 4D.