OpenSTED: open-source dynamic intensity minimum system for stimulated emission depletion microscopy

Stimulated emission depletion (STED) is a powerful super-resolution microscopy technique that can be used for imaging live cells. However, the high STED laser powers can cause significant photobleaching and sample damage in sensitive biological samples. The dynamic intensity minimum (DyMIN) technique turns on the STED laser only in regions of the sample where there is fluorescence signal, thus saving significant sample photobleaching. The reduction in photobleaching allows higher resolution images to be obtained and longer time-lapse imaging of live samples. A stand-alone module to perform DyMIN is not available commercially.

In this work, we developed an open-source design to implement three-step DyMIN on a STED microscope and demonstrated reduced photobleaching for timelapse imaging of beads, cells, and tissue.

The DyMIN system uses a fast multiplexer circuit and inexpensive field-programmable gate array controlled by Labview software that operates as a stand-alone module for a STED microscope. All software and circuit diagrams are freely available.

We compared time-lapse images of bead samples using our custom DyMIN system to conventional STED and recorded a $$ higher signal when using DyMIN after a 50-image sequence. We further demonstrated the DyMIN system for time-lapse STED imaging of live cells and brain tissue slices.

Our open-source DyMIN system is an inexpensive add-on to a conventional STED microscope that can reduce photobleaching. The system can significantly improve signal to noise for dynamic time-lapse STED imaging of live samples.