Resolution Doubling with Digital Confocal Microscopy
This technology includes a microscopy method that reduces the speed penalty at least 1000-fold, while retaining resolution improvement. A Digital mirror device (DMD) or sweptfield confocal unit is used to create hundreds to thousands of excitation foci that are imaged to a sample mounted in a conventional microscope and record the resulting emissions on an array detector. Detection of each confocal spot is done in our proprietary software, as is the processing and deconvolution that is used for a 2x resolution enhancement. Our method provides some optical sectioning, as we can implement a variable pinhole for each confocal spot in software - thus offering advantages over existing 2D resolution-doubling structured illumination approaches that are commercially available. Furthermore, as the pinholes are 'digital' there is no loss in light due to the extra optics and pinholes contained in commercial sweptfield confocal microscopes.