Single-shot optical sectioning using polarization-coded structured illumination

The acquisition of optically sectioned light microscopy images has become a fundamental tool of cell biology. However, most techniques capable of optical sectioning suffer from either a limited acquisition rate or a rather large slice thickness. In this paper we propose the technique of polarization-illumination-coded structured illumination (picoSIM), which combines high temporal and high spatial resolution. Our technique encodes the three individual light patterns needed for conventional structured illumination microscopy in a polarization-coded light distribution; this allows the acquisition of the three images required for the computational reconstruction of a sectioned image in one single exposure, allowing imaging with in principle arbitrary temporal resolution. We derive the imaging properties of this technique and propose a possible setup. Furthermore we show how an optical demodulation of the detected light would allow real-time observation of optically sectioned images.