Compact and low-cost structured illumination microscopy using an optical fiber coupler

In this paper, a compact and low-cost structured illumination microscope (SIM) based on a 2 × 2 fiber coupler is presented. Fringe illumination is achieved by placing two output fiber tips at a conjugate Fourier plane of the sample plane as the point sources. Raw structured illumination (SI) images in different pattern orientations are captured when rotating the fiber mount. Following this, high resolution images are reconstructed from no-phase-shift raw SI images by using a joint Richardson–Lucy (jRL) deconvolution algorithm. Compared with other SIM setups, our method provides a much shorter illumination path, high power efficiency, and low cost.