Structured illumination

Structured illumination can be used to increase the resolution of wide field fluorescence imaging. The idea is best motivated by thinking about Moire fringes. In panel (a) below, if you stand away from the screen at some point the two gratings will appear each as gray panels rather than gratings. Thus, this low spatial frequency pattern is revealing information that exists beyond the resolving power. This technique can offer at least a doubling of spatial resolution, and in the presence of nonlinear saturation effects, can theoretically offer unlimited resolution.


This technology was pioneered by Mats Gustafsson. I briefly met Mats at a conference in 2006. We corresponded via email and he was generously helpful as I planned out building my own structured illumination rig. Mats’ lab is now at Janelia Farms.

This blog is about open solutions, and maybe someday in the future I’ll post more about building your own structured illumination microscope, but today I wanted to highlight this technology and point out that Leica is offering a turnkey solution for structured illumination (link).