Abstract

The technique of structured illumination has been shown to provide optical sectioning. This is because it is only the zero spatial frequency component of an image in a conventional whole-field microscope that is not attenuated with defocus [1], By projecting a grating onto the sample and recording three spatially modulated images of the sample, it is possible to mathematically extract a conventional whole-field image and a sectioned whole-field image that is similar to that obtained in a confocal microscope. This elegant technique has been shown to work with reflected light or with fluorescence [2], In practice the requirement for post-acquisition processing required to extract the sectioned image can limit the rate at which the sectioned image can be displayed in real time and any noise or other factor impacting the dynamic range of the image acquisition can compromise the ability to extract the sectioned image from the acquired intensity distributions. This is a particular problem when trying to image through a turbid medium that results in a scattered light background.

© 2001 Optical Society of America