Open AccessHighly compact and cost-effective 2-beam super-resolution structured illumination microscope based on all-fiber optic components
Author(s) -
Jakub Pospíšil,
Gerd Wiebusch,
Karel Fliegel,
Miloš Klíma,
Thomas Huser
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.394
H-Index - 271
ISSN - 1094-4087
DOI - 10.1364/oe.420592
Subject(s) - optics , microscope , beam splitter , materials science , optical fiber , laser , interferometry , microelectromechanical systems , fiber laser , optoelectronics , physics
Current super-resolution structured illumination microscopes (SR-SIM) utilize relatively expensive electro-optic components and free-space optics, resulting in large setups. Moreover, high power laser sources are required to compensate for the losses associated with generating the illumination pattern by diffractive optics. Here, we present a highly compact and flexible 2D SR-SIM microscope based on all-fiber optic components (fiberSIM). Fiber-splitters deliver the laser light to the sample resulting in the interference illumination pattern. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based fiber switch performs rapid pattern rotation. The pattern phase shift is achieved by the spatial displacement of one arm of the fiber interferometer using a piezoelectric crystal. Compared with existing methods, fiberSIM is highly compact and significantly reduces the SR-SIM component cost while achieving comparable results, thus providing a route to making SR-SIM technology accessible to even more laboratories in the life sciences.