Abstract
Improving the spatial resolution of optical microscopes is important for a vast number of applications in the life sciences. Optical microscopy allows intact samples and living cells to be studied in their natural environment, tasks that are not possible with other microscopy methods (e.g. electron microscopy). Major advances in the past two decades have significantly improved microscope resolution. By using interference and structured light methods microscope resolution has been improved to ∼100 nm, and with non-linear methods a ten times improvement has been demonstrated to a current resolution limit of ∼30 nm. These methods bring together old theoretical concepts such as interference with novel non-linear methods that improve spatial resolution beyond the limits that were previously assumed to be unreachable.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 3-12 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Current Opinion in Biotechnology |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 1 SPEC. ISS. |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2005 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We would like to thank Stefan W Hell (MPI Göttingen), Mats Gustafsson (UCSF), Rainer Heintzmann (MPI Göttingen), Ernst HK Stelzer (EMBL) and Tziki Kam (Weizmann Institute) for providing helpful information and data to the review. Further we would like to acknowledge the Physics for Technology program of the Foundation for Fundamental Research in Matter (FOM, The Netherlands) for its support.