SSPIM: a beam shaping toolbox for structured selective plane illumination microscopy

An important aim of the development of selective plane illumination microscopy (SPIM) is to present a completely open and flexible microscope set-up for nonspecialist users. Here, we report Structured SPIM (SSPIM), which provides an open-source, user-friendly and compact toolbox for beam shaping that can generate digital patterns for a wide range of illumination beams. SSPIM represents a toolbox to produce static, spherical Gaussian, Bessel and Airy beams by simple control of a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM). In addition, it is able to produce patterns for incoherent and coherent (lattice beam) array beam formation and tiling for all types of beams supported. We demonstrate the workflow and experimental and simulation results using the SSPIM toolbox. In final, the capability of the SSPIM is investigated with 3D imaging of Drosophila embryo using three different illumination beams such as scanned/dithered Gaussian, Bessel and Lattice beam which engineered with SSPIM. SSPIM toolbox is easy to use and applicable for a wide range of applications to generate and optimize the desired beam pattern and thus can help developing adaptation of the Open SPIM system towards a wider range of biological samples.