Generation of Multispot PSF for Scanning Structured Illumination via Phase Retrieval

Abstract

In this work, we propose a structured illumination (SI) method based on a two-photon excitation (TPE) scanning laser beam. Advantages of TPE methods include optical sectioning, low phototoxicity, and robustness in the face of sample-induced scattering. We designed a novel multispot point spread function (PSF) for a fast, two-photon scanning SIM microscope. Our multispot PSF is generated with a phase retrieval algorithm. We show how to obtain the phase distribution and then simulate the effect of this distribution on a spatial light modulator (SLM), which produces the multispot PSF in the object plane of the microscope. We produce simulations that show the viability of this method. The results are simulated and a multispot PSF scanning SIM microscope is proposed.