Mosaic Digital Illumination Systems

Technology

Photonic Instruments’ proprietary and patented Mosaic Digital Illumination Systems product incorporates Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), technology.   The inherent advantages of DMDs uniquely enable true digital fluorescence excitation – not simply real time excitation, but zero delta time excitation of infinitely complex geometries.

The core of the technology is the Digital Micromirror Device, a high speed and highly efficient semiconductor-based "light switch" array of up to 2 million hinge-mounted addressable, tiltable, microscopic mirrors. It is a mass-produced spatial light modulator based on mature semiconductor material systems and processing. Numbering more than 8 million in the field, the DMD is also the core of consumer electronics products such as HDTVs and projectors, with a proven track record for ruggedness, reliability and long lifetime.

When a DMD chip is coordinated with a digital video or graphic signal, a light source, and beam delivery optics, its mirrors reflect a digital image onto the sample.  Infinitely complex geometries of fluorophore excitation patterns are simultaneously mapped onto the sample. In combination with continuous-wave or arc lamp light fluorescence excitation sources and laser scanning confocal, spinning disk confocal or wide-field microscopes, the computer-controlled DMD spatial light modulator produces a diffraction-limited mask at the specimen plane, at the image detector and within the microscope eyepiece field of view.

A DMD’s simple plano reflective optical design is readily integrated with the complex optical designs of confocal and wide-field microscopes to realize diffraction-limited imaging with minimal loss over a broad spectral range. Alternative spatial light modulating technologies such as acousto-optic and liquid crystal are less efficient and optically more complex, making them less amenable to diffraction-limited integration with off-the-shelf microscope platforms. This is a critical consideration for maintaining reproducibility of microscope-specific data and for staying within equipment budgets. 

DMD technology holds the promise of revolutionizing live-cell imaging and is poised to do the same for other fluorescence imaging applications. For the first time, researchers can simultaneously and accurately excite fluorophores in multiple regions of interest with complex geometries and with zero delta time. With this tool, researchers are realizing unprecedented discoveries in the life sciences.