High-fidelity structured illumination microscopy by point-spread-function engineering

• Published in: Light, science & applications Vol. 10; no. 1; p. 70
• Main Authors: Wen, Gang, Li, Simin, Wang, Linbo, Chen, Xiaohu, Sun, Zhenglong, Liang, Yong, Jin, Xin, Xing, Yifan, Jiu, Yaming, Tang, Yuguo, Li, Hui
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 01.04.2021; Springer Nature B.V; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/624/1107/510; 639/624/1111/55; Applied and Technical Physics; Atomic; Classical and Continuum Physics; Illumination; Lasers; Microscopy; Molecular; Optical and Plasma Physics; Optical Devices; Optics; Photonics; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Sectioning
• ISSN: 2047-7538; 2095-5545; 2047-7538
• DOI: 10.1038/s41377-021-00513-w

Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) has become a widely used tool for insight into biomedical challenges due to its rapid, long-term, and super-resolution (SR) imaging. However, artifacts that often appear in SIM images have long brought into question its fidelity, and might cause misinterpretation of biological structures. We present HiFi-SIM, a high-fidelity SIM reconstruction algorithm, by engineering the effective point spread function (PSF) into an ideal form. HiFi-SIM can effectively reduce commonly seen artifacts without loss of fine structures and improve the axial sectioning for samples with strong background. In particular, HiFi-SIM is not sensitive to the commonly used PSF and reconstruction parameters; hence, it lowers the requirements for dedicated PSF calibration and complicated parameter adjustment, thus promoting SIM as a daily imaging tool.