Mercury Arc Lamp Based Three Dimensional Super-Resolution Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy Study

Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy is a new type of microscope with sub-diffraction resolution that has great application in cell biology, neural biology and so on. However, it has disadvantages of complicated light path and expensive price. In this paper, we present a mercury arc lamp based new way of implementation. The approach is based on a regular microscope, we retain the original arc lamp as the photoactivation light source instead of the common laser devices, whose power density is not only enough to activate the fluorescence in dark state (1-100W/cm2) but also has the advantages of cheap in price and wide range in spectra wavelength. And we incorporate an inexpensive high power density diode laser for imaging, to accelerate the switching speed. As alterations to the standard microscope is minimal, this optical setup can be easily adapted in a typical research laboratory and even undergraduate teaching experiments, providing an inexpensive system for students and research scientists who require such super resolution capabilities. With this simple design, a spatial resolution of better than40nm in lateral direction and100nm in axial direction at a reasonable frame rate has been achieved, adequate for most routine applications.