Total internal reflection fluorescence microscope

A total internal reflection fluorescence microscope (TIRFM) is a type of microscope with which a thin region of a specimen, usually less than 200 nanometers can be observed. TIRFM is an imaging modality which uses the excitation of fluorescent cells in a thin optical specimen section that is supported on a glass slide. The technique is based on the principle that when excitation light is totally internally reflected in a transparent solid coverglass at its interface with a liquid medium, an electromagnetic field, also known as an evanescent wave, is generated at the solid-liquid interface with the same frequency as the excitation light. The intensity of the evanescent wave exponentially decays with distance from the surface of the solid so that only fluorescent molecules within a few hundred nanometers of the solid are efficiently excited. Two-dimensional images of the fluorescence can then be obtained, although there are also mechanisms in which three-dimensional information on the location of vesicles or structures in cells can be obtained. Widefield Fluorescence was introduced in 1910 which was an optical technique that illuminates the entire sample as seen in Figure 1. Confocal microscopy was then introduced in 1960 which decreased the background and exposure time of the sample by directing light to a pinpoint and illuminating cones of light into the sample. In the 1980s, the introduction of TIRFM further decreased background and exposure time by only illuminating the thin section of the sample being examined. There are two common methods for producing the evanescent wave for TIRFM. The first is the prism method which uses a prism to direct the laser toward the interface between the coverglass and the media/cells at an incident angle sufficient to cause total internal reflection. This configuration has been applied to cellular microscopy for over 30 years but has never become a mainstream tool due to several limitations.