"Enhancing Microscope Information with Photon-by-Photon Image Building"

A new compact ISM microscope equipped with a SPAD array detector provides high-resolution structural and functional imaging by recording the spatial distribution of incident light, enabling super-resolution technique known as image scanning microscopy (ISM). Researchers at the Italian Institute of Technology developed the microscope, which combines fluorescence lifetime measurements with ISM (FLISM) and time-resolved measurements with stimulated emission depletion (STED) microscopy, allowing for multispecies imaging with a single detector for increased structural specificity. The system can distinguish different dyes with their fluorescence lifetime values and enriches the microscopy dataset with additional spatial and temporal information without the need to change the optical architecture of a confocal microscope.