DEVICE FOR IMPROVING PERFORMANCE IN STED AND RESOLFT MICROSCOPY USING A SINGLE PHASE MASK

摘要

The present invention refers to a method for high spatial resolution imaging comprising a phase plate or a spatial light modulator (SLM) device for STimulated Emission Depletion (STED) microscopy and Reversible Saturable OpticaL Fluorescence Transitions (RESOLFT) microscopy, where a bivortex pattern is imprinted on the said phase plate or SLM to generate a beam. The bivortex pattern allows some freedom in shaping the STED beam to improve the microscope's axial performance and optical sectioning capacity.The present invention further refers to a method for STED and RESOLFT microscopy comprising the step of modulating the optical phase of a laser using a phase plate or a spatial light modulator device with a phase mask comprising a bivortex with a tunable radius.The disclosed phase masks and methods of STED and RESOLFT microscopy may advantageously be applied to provide a hybrid 2D/3D STED regime but one with a significant reduction in the degrees of freedom for alignment relative to what is found in incoherent beam superpositions, thus providing an improvement in beam quality, namely a minimized central intensity and lower sensitivity to aberrations, resulting in an increased signal level and axial performance.