Principle

The DeltaVision OMX V4 enables 3D SIM, a method that breaks the diffraction limit of light. 3D SIM is a wide-field imaging technique in which the entire field of view is illuminated with a striped pattern of interfering light know as Moiré fringes. This grid shadow is typically projected onto the specimen and only become visible in the focal plane. By acquiring multiple images with the striped pattern superimposed in different positions, it is possible to remove out-of-focus light and to gain access to higher resolution information in the specimen through computation.

Advantages

3D SIM improves the lateral and axial resolution by a factor of 2 over conventional fluorescence microscopy and is compatible with multicolor imaging. The main limitations of 3D SIM are its low temporal resolution hindering its use for the study of dynamic structures, its practical imaging depth limited to ~20 µm, and its reliance on a computationally derived image that may introduce artifacts.