Highly compact and cost-effective 2-beam super-resolution structured illumination microscope based on all-fiber optic components

Current super-resolution structured illumination microscopes (SR-SIM) utilize relatively expensive electro-optic components and free-space optics, resulting in large setups. Moreover, high power laser sources are required to compensate for the losses associated with generating the illumination pattern by diffractive optics. Here, we present a highly compact and flexible 2D SR-SIM microscope based on all-fiber optic components (fiberSIM). Fiber-splitters deliver the laser light to the sample resulting in the interference illumination pattern. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based fiber switch performs rapid pattern rotation. The pattern phase shift is achieved by the spatial displacement of one arm of the fiber interferometer using a piezoelectric crystal. Compared with existing methods, fiberSIM is highly compact and significantly reduces the SR-SIM component cost while achieving comparable results, thus providing a route to making SR-SIM technology accessible to even more laboratories in the life sciences. (C) 2021 Optical Society of America under the terms of the OSA Open Access Publishing Agreement

Automated summary

The compact and flexible 2D SR-SIM microscope based on fiber optic components (fiberSIM) utilizes fiber-splitters and a MEMS fiber switch to achieve interference illumination pattern and rapid pattern rotation. Compared to existing methods, fiberSIM is smaller in size, lowers SR-SIM component cost, and achieves comparable results, making SR-SIM technology more accessible to laboratories in the life sciences.