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Updated: Sep 30, 2026

A Guide to Structured Illumination TIRF Microscopy at High Speed with Multiple Colors
Published on: May 30, 2016
Open Fourier Ptychographic Microscopy (OpenFPM)
Lewis D Walker1,2, Laura Copeland1,2, Liam M Rooney3
1Strathclyde Institute of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Strathclyde, 161 Cathedral Street, Glasgow G4 0RE, UK.
Abstract:
Fourier ptychographic microscopy (FPM) uses sequential multi-angle illumination and iterative phase retrieval to recover a high-resolution complex image from a series of low-resolution brightfield and darkfield images. We present OpenFPM, a modular, low-cost, and open-source FPM platform in which conventional and optomechanical hardware is replaced with compact, low-cost three-dimensional-printed components. Illumination, sample and objective positioning, and camera triggering are controlled using a Python-based interface on a Raspberry Pi microcomputer. With a 10×/0.25 NA objective lens and 636 nm illumination, OpenFPM experimentally achieves amplitude and phase reconstructions with an effective synthetic NA of 0.90 over a 1 mm field-of-view. This platform gives researchers accessible and affordable hardware for developing and testing LED-array microscopy techniques for a range of biomedical imaging applications.
