title: Review of recent developments in stimulated emission depletion microscopy: applications on cell imaging.
abstract: Stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy is one type of far-field optical technique demonstrated to provide subdiffraction resolution. STED microscopy utilizes a donut-shaped depletion beam to limit the probe volume to be much smaller than a diffraction-limited spot. Resolutions as small as a few tens of nanometers laterally are reported for cell analysis. The different versions of STED microscopes are described and contrasted in terms of their applicability for biological imaging. Finally, we suggest likely avenues for improving the performance and increasing the utility of STED microscopy.
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Raleigh, North Carolina 27599-7115, United States.
authors.forename: Bhanu
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Neupane
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Raleigh, North Carolina 27599-7115, United States.
authors.forename: Frances S
authors.initials: FS
authors.lastname: Ligler
authors.affiliation: North Carolina State University, Department of Chemistry, Raleigh, North Carolina 27695-8204, United States.
authors.forename: Gufeng
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D058948:Cell Tracking / Q000295:instrumentation*; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D007834:Lasers; D008029:Lighting / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D013347:Subcellular Fractions / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D013673:Technology Assessment, Biomedical