Selective volume illumination microscopy offers synchronous volumetric imaging with high contrast

Light field microscopy provides an efficient means to collect 3D images in a single acquisition, as its plenoptic detection captures an extended image volume in one snapshot. The ability of light field microscopy to simultaneously capture image data from a volume of interest, such as a functioning brain or a beating heart, is compromised by inadequate contrast and effective resolution, due, in large part, to light scattering by the tissue. Surprisingly, a major contribution to the image degradation is the signal scattered into the volume of interest by the typical wide-field illumination that excites the sample region outside the volume of interest. Here, we minimize this degradation by employing selective volume illumination, using a modified light sheet approach to illuminate preferentially the volume of interest. This minimizes the unavoidable background generated when extraneous regions of the sample are illuminated, dramatically enhancing the contrast and effective resolution of the captured and reconstructed images. Light Field Selective Volume Illumination Microscopy (LF-SVIM, SVIM for short) dramatically improves the performance of light field microscopy, and offers an unprecedented combination of synchronous z-depth coverage, lateral and axial resolution, and imaging speed.