Metasurface-based Airy light-sheet fluorescence microscopy

Light-sheet fluorescence microscopy (LSFM) is an essential imaging system for observing biological samples with high contrast, low phototoxicity, and rapid image acquisition. Traditional LSFM utilizes Gaussian illumination with a limited system field of view (FOV) due to the short Rayleigh range. As one kind of the propagation-invariant light field, the Airy beam can inherently extend the FOV and enhance the axial resolution for microscopy. However, implementing an Airy-LSFM requires a complex illumination system. Here, we demonstrate that the Airy light-sheet is conveniently integrated into LSFM using a polarization-independent, Airy metasurface to achieve compact illumination, large system FOV, and high image quality. To verify the performance of the metasurface-based Airy LSFM (meta-Airy LSFM), ex vivo imaging of fluorescently labeled Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) embryos was conducted. The Richardson–Lucy deconvolution technique was applied to further improve the image quality. The experimental results show that the axial and lateral resolution of the meta-Airy LSFM is 2.3 and 0.69 μm, respectively, while the FOV is significantly improved tenfold, up to 200 μm. The tightly packed integration of the Airy light-sheet metasurface in LSFM enables wide-ranging biological applications and has great potential to be easily adapted across various LSFM modalities.