Microscopy and its focal switch

Until not very long ago, it was widely accepted that lens-based (far-field) optical microscopes cannot visualize details much finer than about half the wavelength of light. The advent of viable physical concepts for overcoming the limiting role of diffraction in the early 1990s set off a quest that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inNature methods Vol. 6; no. 1; pp. 24 - 32
Main Author Hell, Stefan W
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Nature Publishing Group US 01.01.2009
Nature Publishing Group
Subjects
Animals
Bioinformatics
Biological Microscopy
Biological Techniques
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedical Engineering/Biotechnology
Diffraction
Evaluation
Fluorescence
Fluorescence microscopy
Innovations
Life Sciences
Microscopy
Microscopy, Fluorescence - instrumentation
Microscopy, Fluorescence - methods
Nanostructures - ultrastructure
Nonlinear Dynamics
Optics
perspective
Proteomics
Research methodology
Germany
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Summary:Until not very long ago, it was widely accepted that lens-based (far-field) optical microscopes cannot visualize details much finer than about half the wavelength of light. The advent of viable physical concepts for overcoming the limiting role of diffraction in the early 1990s set off a quest that has led to readily applicable and widely accessible fluorescence microscopes with nanoscale spatial resolution. Here I discuss the principles of these methods together with their differences in implementation and operation. Finally, I outline potential developments.
ISSN:1548-7091
1548-7105
DOI:10.1038/nmeth.1291