3D printed lenslet arrays for MEMS-enabled multifocal structured illumination microscopy

A multifocal structured illumination microscope (mSIM) was constructed using a MEMS scanner and 3D printed lenslet array elements to evaluate the use of non-imaging 3D printed optics for super-resolution microscopy applications. The lenslet arrays functioning as the core optical element were a high-end glass commercial lenslet array with 250 µm pitch lenslets and a custom ‘honeycomb’ geometry 3D printed lenslet array with 1.2 mm pitch lenslets. Compared to traditional widefield images, the custom mSIM setup exemplified a 1.4x and a 1.3x actin filament contrast improvement when imaging the biological features using the commercial glass array and the custom 3D printed element respectively. This exemplifies that within a low-cost mSIM system and without the addition of image deconvolution, 3D printed optics can provide simple and tailorable solutions to obtain ~√2 spatial resolution improvements to standard widefield or laser-scanned imaging methods.