Highly compact and cost-effective 2-beam super-resolution structured illumination microscope based on all-fiber optic components

Current super-resolution structured illumination microscopes (SR-SIM) utilize relatively expensive electro-optic components and free-space optics, resulting in large setups. Moreover, high power laser sources are required to compensate for the losses associated with generating pattern by diffractive optics. Here, we present a highly compact flexible 2D SR-SIM microscope based on all-fiber optic (fiberSIM). Fiber-splitters deliver light sample interference pattern. A microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) fiber switch performs rapid rotation. The phase shift is achieved spatial displacement of one arm interferometer using piezoelectric crystal. Compared existing methods, fiberSIM significantly reduces component cost while achieving comparable results, thus providing route making technology accessible even more laboratories life sciences.