Super-resolution microscopy is a relatively new method compared to confocal microscopy, and ongoing developments aim to improve its standards. While confocal microscopy has been praised for its high contrast, recent methods show that super-resolution microscopy, specifically via the instant-structured illumination microscopy (i-SIM) technique, is capable of capturing reflectance imaging with more than double the resolution of confocal microscopy. This increased resolving capability has been applied to imaging nanoparticle uptake and localization inside cells. These developments contribute to super-resolution microscopy becoming a validated alternative to confocal microscopy for imaging subcellular activity. Whilst maintaining the necessary temporal resolution and at a low photobleaching level, our VT-iSIM offers a spatial resolution of 100 nm and axial resolution of 300 nm.

Super-resolution microscopy allows us to see the smallest structures in living cells that are not visible with standard widefield or confocal fluorescence microscopy. We have another superresolution microscopy called Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy (N-STORM). This technique provides a 3D resolution that is much higher than the diffraction limit, giving us new insights into the organization of cells and the dynamics of biomolecular assemblies at a nearmolecular level. Super-resolution microscopy overcomes the diffraction barrier, enabling "nanoscopy" with greatly improved optical resolution down to 20 nm. This method relies on the physical or chemical properties of nearby fluorophores to distinguish them from each other.

Besides the above super-resolution microscopy, our system also capable to do conventional confocal microscopy. All these are installed in a Nikon state-of-the-art inverted microscope.