Metasurface-based Airy light-sheet fluorescence microscopy
Journal
Applied Physics Reviews
Journal Volume
12
Journal Issue
3
Start Page
031412
ISSN
19319401
Date Issued
2025-09-01
Author(s)
Hsu, Hung-Chuan
Vyas, Sunil
Chu, Cheng Hung
Tanaka, Takuo
Tsai, Din Ping
YUAN LUO
Abstract
Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) is an essential imaging system for observing biological samples with high contrast, low phototoxicity, and rapid image acquisition. Traditional LSFM utilizes Gaussian illumination with a limited system field of view (FOV) due to the short Rayleigh range. As one kind of the propagation-invariant light field, the Airy beam can inherently extend the FOV and enhance the axial resolution for microscopy. However, implementing an Airy-LSFM requires a complex illumination system. Here, we demonstrate that the Airy light-sheet is conveniently integrated into LSFM using a polarization-independent, Airy metasurface to achieve compact illumination, large system FOV, and high image quality. To verify the performance of the metasurface-based Airy LSFM (meta-Airy LSFM), ex vivo imaging of fluorescently labeled Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) embryos was conducted. The Richardson-Lucy deconvolution technique was applied to further improve the image quality. The experimental results show that the axial and lateral resolution of the meta-Airy LSFM is 2.3 and 0.69 μm, respectively, while the FOV is significantly improved tenfold, up to 200 μm. The tightly packed integration of the Airy light-sheet metasurface in LSFM enables wide-ranging biological applications and has great potential to be easily adapted across various LSFM modalities.
SDGs
Publisher
American Institute of Physics
Type
journal article