New 3D Imaging Method for Microscopes

New method for high resolution three dimension microscopic imaging being explored.

"This method, named bijective illumination collection imaging (BICI), can extend the range of high-resolution imaging by over 12-fold compared to the state-of-the-art imaging techniques," says Pahlevani

Fig. 1 | BICI concept. 

a, The illumination beam is generated by collimated light positioned off the imaging optical axis. 

b, The metasurface bends a ray family (sheet) originating from an arc of radius r by a constant angle β to form a focal point on the z axis. A family of rays originating from the same arc is shown as a ray sheet. 

c, Ray sheets subject to the same bending model constitute a focal line along the z axis. The focal line is continuous even though a finite number of focal points is illustrated for clarity. 

d, The collection metasurface establishes trajectories of collected light in ray sheets, as mirror images of illumination paths with respect to the x–z plane. This configuration enables a one-to-one correspondence, that is, a bijective relation between the focal points of the illumination and collection paths, to eliminate out-of-focus signals. The magnified inset demonstrates the bijective relation. 

e, Top view of the illumination and collection beams. 

f, Schematic of the illumination and collection beams and a snapshot captured using a camera from one of the lateral planes intersecting the focal line, illustrating the actual arrangement of illumination and collection paths. This arrangement allows only the collection of photons originating from the corresponding illumination focal point.

Metasurface-based bijective illumination collection imaging provides high-resolution tomography in three dimensions (Masoud Pahlevaninezhad, Yao-Wei Huang , Majid Pahlevani , Brett Bouma, Melissa J. Suter , Federico Capasso  and Hamid Pahlevaninezhad )