Experimental Demonstration of Multi Moire Structured Illumination Microscopy

Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) improves spatial resolution by folding high-frequency spectral components into the optical system's passband. While linear SIM is superior in terms of temporal resolution, living-cells imaging compatibility, and overall optical setup simplicity relative to other super-resolution techniques, it is, however, inferior when it comes to spatial resolution enhancement capability. In this letter, we present experimental demonstration of a novel Multi Moiré SIM (MM-SIM) scheme achieving improved lateral resolution enhancement while preserving the inherent advantages of linear SIM. Using MM-SIM, an approximately 4-fold lateral resolution enhancement was achieved, effectively increasing the optical system's NA from 0.4 to 1.6. The MM-SIM scheme is a simple and robust realization of 4-fold resolution enhancement capable of unleashing the full potential of standing-wave total internal reflection fluorescence structured illumination microscopy (TIRF-SIM) while preserving the inherent advantages of SIM.