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Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Single Plane Illumination Module and Micro-capillary Approach for a Wide-field Microscope
Published on: August 15, 2014
User-friendly oblique plane microscopy on a fully functional commercially available microscope base
George Sirinakis1,2, Edward S Allgeyer1, Dmitry Nashchekin1
1The Gurdon Institute and the Department of Genetics University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QN, United Kingdom.
This study introduces an oblique plane microscope (OPM) using a two-mirror scanning system. This design maintains image quality despite objective lens movement, enhancing OPM versatility.
Area of Science:
- Optical microscopy
- Biomedical engineering
Background:
- Commercial microscope bases offer advanced functionality but often have movable objective lenses.
- Traditional oblique plane microscopes (OPMs) may face challenges with such mobile objectives.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop an OPM system compatible with commercial microscope bases.
- To address the challenge of objective lens displacement in OPMs.
Main Methods:
- Designed an OPM system with a two-mirror scanning geometry.
- Integrated the OPM with a commercially available microscope base.
- Tested performance with a 100X, 1.35 numerical aperture objective lens within a ±1 mm displacement range.
Main Results:
- The two-mirror system compensated for objective lens displacement.
- Point spread function (PSF) size increased by <3% (lateral) and <11% (axial) with ±1 mm displacement.
- Magnification error remained below 0.5% within ±10 µm of the focal plane.
Conclusions:
- The developed OPM system demonstrates robust performance with mobile objective lenses.
- The two-mirror scanning geometry offers advantages in light efficiency and footprint compared to scan-lens/galvo-mirror systems.
- This approach enhances the adaptability of OPMs for various microscopy platforms.
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