title: Axial resolution beyond the diffraction limit of a sheet illumination microscope with stimulated emission depletion.
abstract: Planar illumination imaging allows for illumination of the focal plane orthogonal to the imaging axis in various light forms and is advantageous for high optical sectioning, high imaging speed, low light exposure, and inherently deeper imaging penetration into small organisms and tissue sections. The drawback of the technique is the low inherent resolution, which can be overcome by the incorporation of a dual-sheet stimulated emission depletion (STED) beam to the planar illumination excitation. Our initiative is the implementation of STED into the planar illumination microscope for enhanced resolution. We demonstrate some of our implementations. The depletion of STED in the microscope follows an inverse square root saturation for up to 2.5-fold axial resolution improvements with both high and low numerical aperture imaging objectives.
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg, Rudolf Virchow Center, Microscopy Group, Bio-Imaging Center, Josef-Schneider-Str. 2, 97080 Würzburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Mike
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Friedrich
authors.affiliation: University of Würzburg, Rudolf Virchow Center, Microscopy Group, Bio-Imaging Center, Josef-Schneider-Str. 2, 97080 Würzburg, GermanybWilkes University, Department of Biology and Physics, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 18766, United States.
authors.forename: Gregory S
authors.initials: GS
authors.lastname: Harms
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008029:Lighting / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008853:Microscopy / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008856:Microscopy, Fluorescence / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity