Resisting Authority

Light sheet microscopy facilitates rapid, high contrast, volumetric imaging with minimal sample exposure. However, the rapid divergence of a traditional Gaussian light sheet restricts the field-of-view that provides innate sub-cellular resolution. We show that the accelerating Airy beam innately yields high contrast and resolution up to a ten-fold larger field-of-view. In contrast to the Bessel beam which also provides an increased field-of-view, the Airy beam’s characteristic asymmetric excitation pattern results in all fluorescence contributing positively to the contrast, enabling a step change for light sheet microscopy. Light sheet microscopy facilitates high contrast, volumetric imaging with minimal sample exposure by using two objectives placed orthogonally to one another that perform the tasks of excitation and detection. The lateral resolution is solely dictated by the numerical aperture (NA) of the detection objective whereas the axial resolution is determined by a combination of the NA of the detection optics and the width of the generated light sheet1. To ensure optimal excitation of the sample and isotropic resolution in all three dimensions, there is a simultaneous need for extended, uniformly thin light sheets in the excitation path. The Rayleigh range of the Gaussian beam used in traditional light sheet severely restricts the uniformly illuminated field-of-view (FOV)2. Capturing additiona