Spectroscopy method can enhance super-resolution microscopy

A Northwestern Engineering team has improved super-resolution fluorescence microscopy by making it faster, simpler, less expensive, and increasing its resolution by four fold.

The BioOptics World take on this story:

Researchers at the Northwestern University McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science (Evanston, IL) have improved upon super-resolution microscopy (an imaging method that enables study of molecular processes in live cells) with their newly developed super-resolution imaging platform based on spectroscopy. The platform's technology, called spectroscopic photon localization microscopy (SPLM), can analyze individual molecules with sub-nanometer resolution -- and does so by characterizing multiple dye molecules simultaneously, increasing the imaging speed in multi-stained samples.