Abstract
We present a method to use a birefringent crystal for generating two
illumination beams in a digital scanned laser light-sheet microscopy
(DSLM) system. Upon this, a conventional confocal DSLM can be easily
upgraded to a dual-slit confocal DSLM with two-fold imaging speed. We
have implemented this method to our bidirectional DSLM system, locating
two identical calcite crystals on both illumination paths from both
sides of the sample. The neurons of in vivo larval zebrafish have
been fast imaged with sterling image quality, especially
~2.5 times higher contrast, compared to the conventional
DSLM.