A method for sensing a wave-front of specimen light scattered from an illuminated area in a specimen (10) includes the steps of focusing illumination light into the specimen (10), directing specimen light scattered in the specimen (10) to a detector device (50) having a plurality of detector elements (51) and being capable to sense light with local resolution, detecting sample light contained in the specimen light with the detector device (50), said sample light being scattered in a predetermined sample plane (11) of the specimen (10) and being selected by a time-based gating of the specimen light, locally resolved measuring phase information of the sample light, and reconstructing the wave-front of the sample light on the basis of the phase information. Furthermore, a method of microscopic imaging with adapted illumination light is described.