[16a-2C-1~9] 4.2 Bio- and Medical Photonics

▲ [16a-2C-2] Enhancement of the lateral resolution of Raman microscopy by use of structured illumination

〇Almar Palonpon¹, Kozue Watanabe¹, Nicholas Smith², Liang-da Chiu¹, Atsushi Kasai³, Hitoshi Hashimoto³, Satoshi Kawata¹, Katsumasa Fujita¹ (1.Department of Applied Physics, Osaka University, 2.Immunology Frontier Research Center, Osaka University, 3.Laboratory of Molecular Neuropharmacology, Osaka University)

Keywords:super-resolution,Raman microscopy,Optical imaging

Recent developments in optical imaging have pushed the limits of resolution far below the diffraction limit. However, most of these super-resolution techniques cannot be adapted to label-free Raman microscopy because their working principle is based on manipulation of the fluorescence properties of the sample. Here, we present the enhancement of the lateral resolution of Raman microscopy by use of structured illumination. In this scheme, a structured light pattern is introduced in a conventional slit-scanning Raman microscope along the longitudinal direction of the line illumination resulting to the interference of the light pattern with the sample structure, which is detected and processed to obtain super-resolution Raman images. The spatial resolution improvement of structured line illumination (SLI) Raman microscopy is demonstrated using a variety of samples ranging from polystyrene beads to more complex samples such carbon materials and mouse brain tissue. This technique is expected to further enhance the applications of Raman microscopy in various research fields.