Review Aberrations and adaptive optics in super-resolution microscopy

As one of the most powerful tools in the biological investigation of cellular structures and dynamic processes, fluorescence microscopy has undergone extraordinary developments in the past decades. The advent of super-resolution techniques has enabled fluorescence micros-copy – or rather nanoscopy – to achieve nanoscale resolution in living specimens and unrav-elled the interior of cells with unprecedented detail. The methods employed in this expanding field of microscopy, however, are especially prone to the detrimental effects of optical aberra-tions. In this review, we discuss how super-resolution microscopy techniques based upon single-molecule switching, stimulated emission depletion and structured illumination each suffer from aberrations in different ways that are dependent upon intrinsic technical aspects. We discuss the use of adaptive optics as an effectivemeans to overcome this problem. Key words: adaptive optics, aberrations, super-resolution microscopy, single-molecule switching, stimulated emission depletion, structured illuminatio