Stimulated Emission Depletion Microscopy

Stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED) is a diffraction-unlimited fluorescence microscopy technique which reduces the effective point spread function through the combination of excitation laser and the STED laser to obtain high-resolution image. It creates super-resolution images by the selective deactivation of fluorophores, minimizing the area of illumination at the focal point, and thus enhancing the achievable resolution for a given system. STED microscopy allows super-resolution imaging in the 50nm range.