Resolution enhancement in confocal microscopy using Bessel-Gauss beams

Laser scanning microscopy is limited in lateral resolution by the diffraction of light. We show that we can obtain twenty percent improvement in the resolution of confocal microscopy using Bessel-Gauss beams with the right pinhole size compared to conventional Gaussian beam based confocal microscopy. Advantages of this strategy include simplicity of installation and use, linear polarization compatibility, possibility to combine it with other resolution enhancement and superresolution strategies. We demonstrate the resolution enhancement capabilities of Bessel-Gauss beams both theoretically and experimentally on nano-spheres and biological tissue samples without any residual artifacts coming from the Bessel-Gauss beam side lobes with a resolution of 0.39λ. We also show that the resolution enhancement of Bessel-Gauss beams yields a better statistical colocalization analysis with fewer false positive results than when using Gaussian beams. We have also used Bessel-Gauss beams of different orders to further improve the resolution by combining them in SLAM microscopy (Switching LAser Modes : Dehez, Optics Express, 2013) achieving a resolution of 0.2λ.