Interferometric imaging with three objectives.

Abstract

We propose a microscope that utilizes three high numerical aperture objectives to image a sample from multiple angles, interferometrically combining the fields from each objective to obtain a higher resolution and more isotropic point-spread function than standard wide-field and confocal techniques. The proposed microscope utilizes three 0.9NA objectives with large working distance and, therefore, has both a large imaging volume and an effective 2.7NA. The FWHM of the point-spread function is 135nm in the plane of the objectives, a factor of 2 better than the lateral resolution with a single objective. Out of plane, the PSF is equivalent to that of a conventional microscope. Here, we introduce the theoretical framework for evaluating the performance of the microscope and use that framework to quantitatively compare our proposed microscope to existing techniques in confocal and wide-field implementations.