Scanning superlens microscopy for non-invasive large field-of-view visible light nanoscale imaging.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 27934860.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms13748 and PMC identifier 5476830.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Nanoscale correlation of structural information acquisition with specific-molecule identification provides new insight for studying rare subcellular events. To achieve this correlation, scanning electron microscopy has been combined with super-resolution fluorescent microscopy, despite its destructivity when acquiring biological structure information. Here we propose time-efficient non-invasive microsphere-based scanning superlens microscopy that enables the large-area observation of live-cell morphology or sub-membrane structures with sub-diffraction-limited resolution and is demonstrated by observing biological and non-biological objects. This microscopy operates in both non-invasive and contact modes with ∼200 times the acquisition efficiency of atomic force microscopy, which is achieved by replacing the point of an atomic force microscope tip with an imaging area of microspheres and stitching the areas recorded during scanning, enabling sub-diffraction-limited resolution. Our method marks a possible path to non-invasive cell imaging and simultaneous tracking of specific molecules with nanoscale resolution, facilitating the study of subcellular events over a total cell period.