Multi-address coding parallel scanning 3D microscopy

• Beam spatiotemporal coding for efficient imaging. • The regionally coded beam is focused through an axicon. • Parallel scanning microscopy based on orthogonal coded beams. • Only one APD is needed to detect multiple points at the same time. A parallel scanning microscopic imaging system using code division multiple access (CDMA) technology is proposed. By spatially and temporally encoding the illumination beam, and decoding the composite signal after high-speed sampling, the utilization efficiency of the detector is effectively improved, enabling parallel scanning of points at different distances with just one sensor. During 3D microscopy, there is no need to scan the axial direction. The working mechanism of the multi-address coding parallel scanning microscopic imaging system is introduced, and the implementation methods of coding and decoding are explained. According to rigorous mathematical derivations, a mathematical model of the imaging system is built, and the effectiveness of the system is verified through experiments. Moreover, we found that both the number of coding bits and power of the light source have an impact on the image quality of the system. With a 32 bits coding and a light power of 2 mW, our system achieved the highest image quality. And we tested the system's sensitivity to stray light and beam non-idealization. The experimental results show that when the proportion of stray light power is <40 % and the angle deflection of incident light is <1.5°, the imaging quality of the system is almost no longer affected by these two main factors.