Volumetric Lissajous Confocal Microscopy

Dynamic biological systems present challenges to existing three-dimensional (3D) optical microscopes because of their continuous temporal and spatial changes. Most techniques are based on rigid architectures, as in confocal microscopy, where a laser beam is sequentially scanned at a predefined spatial sampling rate and pixel dwell time. Here, we developed volumetric Lissajous confocal microscopy to achieve unsurpassed 3D scanning speed with a tunable sampling rate. The system combines an acoustic liquid lens for continuous axial focus translation with a resonant scanning mirror. Accordingly, the excitation beam follows a dynamic Lissajous trajectory enabling sub-millisecond acquisitions of image series containing 3D information at a sub-Nyquist sampling rate. By temporal accumulation and/or advanced interpolation algorithms, volumetric imaging rate is selectable using a post-processing step at the desired spatiotemporal resolution for events of interest. We demonstrate multicolor and calcium imaging over volumes of tens of cubic microns with acquisition speeds up to 5 kHz.