• Seth W. Perry

    Founder, Veroptics LLC

    Seth W. Perry is a research scientist, writer, technology consultant, and founder of Veroptics LLC (Pittsford, NY).

    (All panels reproduced with permission per Creative Commons open-access licensing terms [14])
    FIGURE 1. A point source of light in the focal plane gets imaged by the microscope objective as an airy disc surrounded by a concentric ring pattern resulting from diffraction (a); when projected in three dimensions, these airy patterns (top panels) comprise PSF (lower panels; b).12, 13 The width and depth of these PSFs dictate maximize x-, y-, and z-resolution, respectively, with higher NA lenses generating smaller airy patterns and PSFs, and thus greater resolution (c).
    Ensuring that data generated by advanced imaging methods faithfully represent the biology being studied requires an understanding of key considerations.