Super-resolution Microscopy with Adaptive Optics for Volumetric Imaging

Optical microscopy is a useful tool for study in the biological sciences. With an optical microscope, we can observe the micro world of life such as tissues, cells, and proteins. A fluorescent dye or a fluo-rescent protein provides an opportunity to mark a specific target in the crowd of biological samples, so that an image of a specific target can be observed by an optical microscope. The optical microscope, however, is constrained in resolution due to diffraction limit. Super-resolution microscopy made a breakthrough with this diffraction limit. Using a super-resolution microscope, many biomolecules are observed beyond the diffraction limit in cells. In the case of volumetric imaging, the super-resolution techniques are only applied to a limited area due to long imaging time, multiple scattering of photons, and sample-induced aberration in deep tissue. In this article, we review recent advances in super -resolution microscopy for volumetric imaging. The super-resolution techniques have been integrated with various modalities, such as a line-scan confocal microscope, a spinning disk confocal microscope, a light sheet microscope, and point spread function engineering. Super-resolution microscopy combined with adaptive optics by compensating for wave distortions is a promising method for deep tissue imag-ing and biomedical applications.