Illumination System for Sub-Diffraction Resolution Microscopy

Abstract

Illumination scheme for superresolution microscopy is developed. The scheme accomplishes dark filed illumination with a laser light source including spatial coherence suppression. The scheme allows to observe nanoparticles with a size smaller than 50 nm. This is necessary to get higher resolution in the previously proposed method of superresolution microscopy (Near field Optical Random Microscopy – NORM). This method is based on real-time video processing of a nanoparticles Brownian motion those are located near the object surface. The method of vertical coordinate measurement is demonstrated. This method is based on astigmatic nanoparticle imaging. Three-dimensional distributions of suspended nanoparticles are obtained. Vertical resolution better than 200 nm and lateral resolution better than 100 nm are demonstrated.