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Updated: Oct 22, 2025

Single Plane Illumination Module and Micro-capillary Approach for a Wide-field Microscope
Published on: August 15, 2014
Self-contained and modular structured illumination microscope
Robin Van den Eynde1, Wim Vandenberg1, Siewert Hugelier1
1Lab for Nanobiology, Department of Chemistry, KU Leuven, Belgium.
Abstract:
We present a modular implementation of structured illumination microscopy (SIM) that is fast, largely self-contained and that can be added onto existing fluorescence microscopes. Our strategy, which we call HIT-SIM, can theoretically deliver well over 50 super-resolved images per second and is readily compatible with existing acquisition software packages. We provide a full technical package consisting of schematics, a list of components and an alignment scheme that provides detailed specifications and assembly instructions. We illustrate the performance of the instrument by imaging optically large samples containing sequence-specifically stained DNA fragments.
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