Structural illumination and evanescent coupling for the extension of imaging interferometric microscopy

A method for microscopy comprising:

• providing a plane-parallel optical element operable to be positioned adjacent to an object, wherein the plane-parallel optical element is characterized by a homogeneous refractive index (npp) and a thickness (tpp), such that a distance of separation between the plane-parallel optical element and the object is within about a wavelength of illumination light incident upon the object;
• providing a first optical system disposed to provide a substantially coherent illumination of the object, wherein the illumination light is characterized by a wavelength λ, a radius of curvature, a center position, and a field-of-view and disposed at one of a plurality of incident wave vectors from about 0 to about 2πnpp/λ with respect to a surface normal of the plane-parallel optical element and at a plurality of azimuth angles spanning about 0 to 2π;
• providing a second optical system including one or more optical components defining an optical axis which is disposed on a side of the plane parallel optical element, the second optical system including a first set of optical media characterized by indices of refraction and thicknesses in which light scattered by the object propagates to the first optical component of the second optical system, an effective numerical aperture (NA) of the combined one or more optical components of the second optical system, a focal plane of the optical system conjugate with a image plane of an optical image recording device, and a field-of-view in the focal plane, wherein the optical axis of the second optical system is disposed at one of a plurality of angles between 0 and π/2−NA with respect to the surface normal of the plane-parallel optical element, the field-of-view of the second optical system is located at a center offset from the center position of the illumination provided by the first optical system, and wherein the one or more optical components of the second optical system are operable to collect at least a portion of the illumination scattered by the object;
• providing a third optical system disposed in an optical path of the first optical system to provide interferometric reintroduction of a portion of the coherent illumination as a reference beam into the third optical system, wherein each of an amplitude, a phase, a radius of curvature, a path length, and an angle of incidence of the reference beam is adjustable such that a reference illumination suitable for interfering with the portion of the illumination scattered by the object and collected by the second optical system is present at an image plane of the second optical system;
• recording a sub-image of the object at an image plane of the second optical system using the image recording device, wherein the sub-image is formed as a result of interference between the scattering resulting from the coherent illumination of the object and the reference beam;
• adjusting the first, the second, and the third optical systems to collect a plurality of sub-images corresponding to a plurality of regions of the object spatial frequency space;
• and
• combining the plurality of sub-images into a composite image to provide an image of the object.