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Updated: Jul 8, 2026

A Guide to Build a Highly Inclined Swept Tile Microscope for Extended Field-of-view Single-molecule Imaging
Published on: April 8, 2019
Highly inclined thin illumination enables clear single-molecule imaging in cells
Makio Tokunaga1, Naoko Imamoto, Kumiko Sakata-Sogawa
1Biological Macromolecules Laboratory, National Institute of Genetics, Yata 1111, Mishima, Shizuoka 411-8540, Japan. mtoku@lab.nig.ac.jp
Abstract:
We describe a simple illumination method of fluorescence microscopy for molecular imaging. Illumination by a highly inclined and thin beam increases image intensity and decreases background intensity, yielding a signal/background ratio about eightfold greater than that of epi-illumination. A high ratio yielded clear single-molecule images and three-dimensional images using cultured mammalian cells, enabling one to visualize and quantify molecular dynamics, interactions and kinetics in cells for molecular systems biology.
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