Deep Volumetric Super‐Resolution Imaging in Thick Biological Specimens With Sparse Scanning SIM
High-resolution fluorescence microscopy deep inside thick, live specimens remains a major challenge due to scattering and limited penetration depth. Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) is widely used for fast super-resolution imaging, yet its sensitivity to scattering strongly restricts volumetric applications. Here we present sparse scanning SIM (SS-SIM), a variant for deep imaging that integrates rapid laser beam scanning with pixel-addressed intensity modulation and sCMOS detection. SS-SIM operates with either one- or two-photon excitation and achieves a spatial resolution of ∼150 nm, and maintains a 1.6/1.7-fold (lateral/axial) resolution enhancement over wide-field microscopy throughout the available imaging depth limited by the working distances of our water-immersion objectives (300/600 µm), enabling volumetric visualization of dense biological samples. By combining simplicity, robustness, and super-resolution performance, SS-SIM expands the applicability of SIM to thick tissues, organoids, and small organisms, providing a practical route to high-contrast volumetric imaging in complex biological environments.
Authors
- Hongfei Suo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8643-1685)
- Zhongxia Cai
- Yunze Lei (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-9092-3050)
- Kai Wen
- Peng Gao
- Gerd Ulrich Nienhaus
- Sha An
- Xuhong Guo
Institutions
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (CN)
- Xidian University (CN)
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Nanomaterials Research (United States) (US)
- Kerntechnische Entsorgung Karlsruhe (Germany) (DE)
- Institute of Nanotechnology (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Advanced Science
- Published
- 2026-02-23
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.74516
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00