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Isotropic three-dimensional super-resolution imaging with a self-bending point spread function

Nature Photonics volume 8, pages 302–306 (2014)Cite this article

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Abstract

Airy beams maintain their intensity profiles over a large propagation distance without substantial diffraction and exhibit lateral bending during propagation1,2,3,4,5. This unique property has been exploited for the micromanipulation of particles6, the generation of plasma channels7 and the guidance of plasmonic waves8, but has not been explored for high-resolution optical microscopy. Here, we introduce a self-bending point spread function (SB-PSF) based on Airy beams for three-dimensional super-resolution fluorescence imaging. We designed a side-lobe-free SB-PSF and implemented a two-channel detection scheme to enable unambiguous three-dimensional localization of fluorescent molecules. The lack of diffraction and the propagation-dependent lateral bending make the SB-PSF well suited for precise three-dimensional localization of molecules over a large imaging depth. Using this method, we obtained super-resolution imaging with isotropic three-dimensional localization precision of 10–15 nm over a 3 µm imaging depth from ∼2,000 photons per localization.

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Figure 1: Self-bending point spread function (SB-PSF).
Figure 2: Three-dimensional localization precision of single fluorescent molecules using the SB-PSF.
Figure 3: STORM imaging of in vitro polymerized microtubules using the SB-PSF.
Figure 4: STORM imaging of microtubules and mitochondria in cells using the SB-PSF.

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Acknowledgements

This project is in part supported by the National Institutes of Health. X.Z. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. J.C.V. is supported in part by a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award at the Scientific Interface.

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Author notes

  1. Joshua C. Vaughan

    Present address: Present address: Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Box 351700, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA,

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

    Shu Jia, Joshua C. Vaughan & Xiaowei Zhuang

  2. Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Harvard University, 12 Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

    Shu Jia, Joshua C. Vaughan & Xiaowei Zhuang

  3. Department of Physics, Harvard University, 17 Oxford St, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

    Xiaowei Zhuang

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  1. Shu Jia
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Contributions

S.J. and X.Z. conceived and designed the project. S.J. performed the experiments, simulations and analysis. J.C.V. helped with the experimental set-up. S.J., J.C.V. and X.Z. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Xiaowei Zhuang.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Jia, S., Vaughan, J. & Zhuang, X. Isotropic three-dimensional super-resolution imaging with a self-bending point spread function. Nature Photon 8, 302–306 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphoton.2014.13

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