Design and analysis of a cross-type structured-illumination confocal microscope for high speed and high resolution

Abstract

There have been many studies about a super resolution microscope for many years. A super resolution microscope can detect the physical phenomena or morphology of a biological sample more precisely than conventional microscopes. The structured-illumination microscope (SIM) is one of the technologies that demonstrate super resolution. However, the conventional SIM requires more time to obtain one resolution-enhanced image than other super resolution microscopes. More specifically, the conventional SIM uses three images with a 120° phase difference for each direction and three different directions are image-processed to make one resolution enhancement by increasing the optical transfer function in three directions. In this paper, we present a novel cross structured-illumination confocal microscope (CSICM) that takes the advantage of the technology of both SIM and the confocal microscope. The CSICM uses only two directions with three phase difference images, for a total of six images. By reducing the number of images that must be obtained, the total image acquisition time and image reconstruction time in obtaining the final output images can be decreased, and the confocal microscope provides axial information of the sample automatically. We demonstrate our method of cross illumination and evaluate the performance of the CSICM and compare it to the conventional SIM and the confocal microscope.

Optimization of spatial light distribution through genetic algorithms for vision systems applied to quality control

“…In this paper we are not considering the so-called structured light (see for example [17][18][19]), often used in three-dimensional shape measurements. In such applications, structured light is used to project a geometric pattern, i.e.…”

Transmission Structured Illumination Microscopy for Quantitative Phase and Scattering Imaging

“…To meet this demand, synthetic aperture approaches in QPM have been reported, for instance, oblique illumination [13][14][15], structured illumination [16][17][18][19], and speckle illumination [20][21][22] (just to cite a few) have been proposed to improve the spatial resolution (or the space-bandwidth product) in QPM. Of note, structured illumination microscopy (SIM) [23][24][25], is a wide-field, minimally-invasive, super-resolution imaging technique, which utilizes moiré patterns created by illuminating the sample with periodic stripes. The structured illumination can downshift unresolvable high-frequency information into low-frequency falling in the supporting area of the system, as illustrated in Figure 1C, [26].…”