DeLIVERy Core Imaging Technology
Our core technology is super-resolution structured illumination microscopy (SR-SIM). In SR-SIM, mutually coherent laser beams are superposed to create an interference pattern. By implementing SR-SIM with fiber optics, we have developed an extremely flexible means to create arbitrary interference pattern and can illuminate the largest possible fields of view, as can be seen below.
The FiberSIM
Our fiber-optic implementation of SR-SIM, the FiberSIM, is a highly modular super-resolution microscope. Its main components are a laser combiner, providing rapid access to long coherence length laser sources, the fiberSwitch as the core unit providing most of the functionality of the system, the hexagonal prism telescope, which allows us to rapidly switch between imaging modalities and a very compact microscope that allows us to precisely position samples within the field of view of an objective lens with high numerical aperture (typically 60x, 1.5 NA).
FiberSwitch in action
The fiberSwitch splits laser light from the laser combiner into 3 pairs of output fibers. It is similar to a Michelson interferometer with galvanometric mirrors sending the two interferometer arms to 3 different polarization-maintaining single mode fibers, respectively.
Each interferometer arm also contains a broadband phase shifter that allows us to vary the phase of the resulting interference pattern.
The hexagonal prism telescope
The hexagonal prism telescope allows us to seamlessly change the separation between a pair of laser beams. This enables us to utilize a wide range of different SR-SIM imaging modalities – from 2D-SIM and 3D-SIM to grazing incidence SIM and TIRF-SIM.
Prism telescope in action
Collectively, by utilizing the combined functions of all the different units, we can image samples such as liver sinusoidal endothelial cells over very large fields of view (up to 150 µm x 150 µm with the 60x objective lens, and up to 250 µm x 250 µm with a 40x, 1.4 NA objective lens) at a spatial resolution of down to 95 nm very rapidly and in multiple color channels.
More details about our core imaging technology can be found in our Publications section, or in:
H. Ortkrass, et al, Opt. Express 31(18), 29156 (2023). DOI: 10.1364/OE.495353
H. Ortkrass, et al, Opt. Express 31(24), 40210 (2023). DOI: 10.1364/OE.504292
H. Ortkrass, et al, Nature Commun. 15(1), 8886 (2024), DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-53198-1
