Enhancement of the lateral resolution of Raman microscopy by use of structured illumination

Recent developments in optical microscopy especially fluorescence microscopy have pushed the limits of spatial resolution below the diffraction limit, to as low as several nanometers. Most of these super-resolution techniques, however, cannot be adapted to Raman microscopy because their working principle is based on manipulating the fluorescence emission properties of the sample. On the other hand, structured illumination microscopy (SIM) utilizes the Moire effect (interference of the structured light pattern with the sample structure) to double the spatial resolution [1] and therefore does not impose particular optical properties on the sample, making it a feasible technique for Raman microscopy.