Light-sheet imaging is rapidly gaining importance for imaging intact biological specimens. Many of the latest innovations rely on the propagation-invariant Bessel or Airy beams to form an extended light sheet to provide high resolution across a large field of view. Shaping light to realize propagation-invariant beams often relies on complex programming of spatial light modulators or specialized, custom made, optical elements. Here we present a straightforward and low-cost modification to the traditional light-sheet setup, based on the open-access light-sheet microscope OpenSPIM, to achieve Airy light-sheet illumination. This brings wide field single-photon light-sheet imaging to a broader range of endusers. Fluorescent microspheres embedded in agarose and a zebrafish larva were imaged to demonstrate how such a microscope can have a minimal footprint and cost without compromising on imaging quality.
Keywords: (070.0070) Fourier optics and signal processing; (110.0180) Microscopy; (110.1758) Computational imaging; (110.4850) Optical transfer functions; (110.7348) Wavefront encoding; (140.3300) Laser beam shaping; (170.0170) Medical optics and biotechnology; (180.6900) Three-dimensional microscopy; (220.1000) Aberration compensation.