Multifocal Three-Dimensional Imaging with Optical Lattice Excitation

Two new classes of optical lattices have been identified [1] that permit the creation of arbitrarily large three-dimensional (3D) arrays of tightly confined excitation maxima of controllable periodicity and polarization from the superposition of a finite set of plane waves (e.g., Fig. Such lattices can serve as 3D multifocal excitation fields for massively parallel fluorescence imaging within living cells, and may prove to be key enablers for the practical adaptation of superresolution techniques [2,3] to intracellular research.