Abberior Instruments is proud to announce its new easy3D STED module which uses a completely novel approach to 3D STED microscopy. At its core, a programmable spatial light modulator (SLM) is used to create the phase patterns required for 2D and 3D STED microscopy. At the same time, it can also be used to correct for optical aberrations.

The SLM allows a revolutionary design with only one STED beam instead of two separate STED beams for lateral (xy) and axial (z) resolution enhancement, respectively. The resolution enhancement can be tuned between pure xy and mainly z enhancement. The single-beam design obsoletes any beam recombination and alignment resulting in unrivaled system stability.

Aberrations do matter! This measurement impressively demonstrates the effect of a refractive index mismatch. When an oil immersion lens is used to image a layer of fluorescent beads imaged through 13 μm of water the image suffers from a significant loss in fluorescence intensity. This results in unusable images, both for confocal and for STED imaging (left).

In contrast, when a water immersion lens is used both layers of beads are imaged with the same quality (right). The Abberior Instruments easy3D design allows you to change the objective lens on the fly and to use the most suitable lens in STED mode also.

Key benefits:

• Tune the resolution in xy and z to fit your imaging problem.

• Use any combination of 2D or 3D STED phase plates or any user-defined phase modulation.

• Aberration correction: keep the STED PSF in shape even deep inside your sample (>20 μm).

• Switch between objective lenses on the fly: oil immersion, water immersion, silicone oil immersion...

• Resolution easy3D: 100 × 100 × 100 nm minimum, 80 × 80 × 90 × nm typical.

• Resolution 2D: better than 30 × 30 nm.

• Any Abberior STED system can be upgraded with the easy3D STED module.