Nikon N-SIM and N-Storm super-resolution microscopes

Nikon Corporation has released two super-resolution microscopes, the N-SIM and N-Storm. The microscopes have been designed to realise resolution higher than ever before achieved by conventional optical microscopes. The N-SIM was developed with technology licensed from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and the N-Storm was developed with technology licensed from Harvard University.

Nikon’s super-resolution fluorescence microscopy technology is claimed to exceed the resolution limits of conventional optical microscopes, making it possible to view microstructures and nanostructures of living cells with molecular-scale resolution.

There is a universal desire among top-end life science researchers to observe tissues and cells more clearly. Optical microscopes are essential for this purpose. However, if multiple objects such as protein molecules cluster at distances of less than 200 nm apart, conventional optical microscopes cannot identify them as single objects. In this case, other instrumentation such as electron microscopes must be used.

N-SIM nearly doubles the resolution of conventional optical microscopes by combining ‘Structured Illumination Microscopy’ technology licensed from UCSF with Nikon’s CFI Apo TIRF 100x oil objective lens (NA 1.49), developed using optical technologies and manufacturing techniques. The microscope provides very fast imaging capability, with a time resolution of 0.6 s/frame, effective for live-cell imaging.

The newly developed TIRF-SIM illumination technique enables total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) observation with higher resolution than conventional TIRF microscopes and gives more detailed structural information near cell membranes. In addition, another new 3D-SIM illumination technique has the capability of optical sectioning of specimens, enabling the visualisation of more detailed cell spatial structures.

N-Storm claims to have an order of magnitude better resolution than conventional optical microscopes. The enhanced resolution is more than 10 times greater than conventional optical microscopes. Storm technology reconstructs high-resolution fluorescence images (2D or 3D) from localisation information of fluorophores detected with high accuracy and calculated from multiple exposures. It generates much more information and takes users one step further, from structural to molecular understanding of the specimen.

N-Storm will not only provide high-resolution 2D-image-acquisition capability, but it will also provide high-resolution fluorescence images of the same specimen in 3D with a simple optical system switchover built into the microscope.