Nanoscopy on-a-chip: super-resolution imaging on the millimeter scale

Optical nanoscopy techniques can image intracellular structures with high specificity at sub-diffraction limited resolution, bridging the resolution gap between optical microscopy and electron microscopy. So far conventional nanoscopy lacks the ability to generate high throughput data, as the imaged region is small. Photonic chip-based nanoscopy has demonstrated the potential for imaging large areas, but at a lateral resolution of 130 nm. However, all the existing super-resolution methods provide a resolution of 100 nm or better. In this work, chip-based nanoscopy is demonstrated with a resolution of 75 nm over an extraordinarily large area of 0.5 mm × 0.5 mm, using a low magnification and high N.A. objective lens. Furthermore, the performance of chip-based nanoscopy is benchmarked by studying the localization precision and illumination homogeneity for different waveguide widths. The advent of large field-of-view chip-based nanoscopy opens up new routes in diagnostics where high throughput is needed for the detection of non-diffuse disease, or rare events such as the early detection of cancer.