System and Method for Producing Nondiffracting Light Sheets that Improves the Performance of Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM)

The technology offered for licensing relates to a system and method of producing nondiffracting beams of light that spatially overlap, but do not interfere with each other when intersecting the detection plane of an optical arrangement. The system includes an illumination source (i.e. ultrafast laser) for transmitting a beam of light through the optical arrangement that includes a diffraction grating for diffracting the light beam to produce beams of light having different wavelengths, which are then passed through an annular aperture that transforms the beams of light into nondiffracting beams having different wavelengths. The method can be readily utilized in Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM), a system that provides optical sectioning of a sample that is labeled with fluorescent dyes. SPIM can provide quantitative three-dimensional maps of the distribution of a flurophore within the sample with high spatiotemporal resolution and an excellent signal-to-noise ratio. The standard SPIM technique however produces nonuniform axial resolution, which is caused by the diffraction of the laser beam through the sample, causing degradation in the optical sectioning, and forcing a compromise between field of view and axial resolution. Techniques for decoupling field of view and axial resolution have previously utilized nondiffracting beams (e.g. Bessel beams) for sample illumination. The resulting interference from multiple nondiffracting beams degrades the quality of optical sectioning and the quality of the image. The present technology utilizing nondiffracting noninterfering beams is intended to alleviate the problems associated with the currently used SPIM techniques.