Microscopy

The need for acquiring at least three images to reconstruct an optical section of a sample limits the acquisition rate in structured illumination microscopy (SIM) for optical sectioning. In polarized illumination coded structured illumination microscopy (picoSIM) the three individual light patterns are encoded in a single polarized illumination light distribution, enabling the acquisition of the complete SIM data in a single exposure. Here, we describe our experimental set-up and show experimental results acquired with sequential and single-shot picoSIM. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Super-resolution structured illumination microscopy (part 2)’.