Recent development in light Ultramicroscopy using aspherical optical elements

Here we present a new light sheet generator unit for Ultramicroscopy (UM) employing a combination of optical lenses with aspherical surface structure. UM allows 3D-vizualization of chemically transparent biological specimens with μm-resolution. Improving optical characteristics parameters of light sheet such as the uniformity factor of spatial intensity distribution along the line of focus, the thickness of light sheet, and chromatic aberrations are the most important criteria in this design. Since we do not use any hard edge aperture there is no truncation of the beam and laser energy is used more efficiently. Due to these improvements, a marked enhancement in presenting fine details of biological specimens such as Drosophila melanogaster, entire mouse brain, and hippocampus are achieved.