Structured illumination microscopy with a phase-modulated spinning disk for optical sectioning

Among various super-resolution microscopic techniques, structured illumination microscopy (SIM) stands out for live-cell imaging because of its higher imaging speed. However, conventional SIM lacks optical sectioning capability. Here we demonstrate a new, to the best of our knowledge, approach using a phase-modulated spinning disk (PMSD) that enhances the optical sectioning capability of SIM. The PMSD consists of a pinhole array for confocal imaging and a transparent polymer layer for light phase modulation. The light phase modulation was designed to cancel the zeroth-order diffracted beam and create a sharp lattice illumination pattern using the interference of four first-order diffracted beams. In the detection optical path, the PMSD serves as a spatial filter to physically reject about 80% of the out-of-focus signals, an approach that allows for real-time optical reconstruction of super-resolved images with enhanced contrast. Furthermore, the simplicity of the design makes it easy to upgrade a conventional fluorescence microscope to a PMSD SIM system.