Microscopy preprints – new tools and techniques in imaging

Posted by FocalPlane, on 20 February 2026

Here is a curated selection of the latest preprints on new tools and techniques in imaging. Let us know if we are missing any recent preprints that are on your reading list!

Adapting the OpenFlexure Microscope for Affordable Live-Cell Imaging
Jodie R Malcolm, Olympia Physouni, Stuart Lacy, Mark Bentley, Stephen P Howarth, Sandy MacDonald, Alastair P Droop, Benedict Powell, Laura Wiggins, William J Brackenbury, Peter J O’Toole

Figure extracted from Malcolm, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

aDISCO: A clearing method to enable 3D microscopy of large archival paraffin-embedded human tissue blocks
Anna Maria Reuss, Dominik Groos, Martina Cerisoli, Lena Nordberg, Lukas Frick, Fabian F. Voigt, Nikita Vladimirov, Philipp Bethge, Regina Reimann, Fritjof Helmchen, Peter Rupprecht, Adriano Aguzzi

Focused ultrasound programmed characteristic NIR-IIb lanthanide mechanoluminescence for high sensitivity bioimaging in vivo
Minglong Zhang, Jieying Zhang, Lingkai Meng, Xiaohe Li, Sixin Xu, Xingjun Zhu

Chiral Single Molecule Localization Microscopy (chiralSMLM)
S Aravinth, Neeraj Pant, Partha P. Mondal

Figure extracted from Aravinth, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Correlative scanning electron and super-resolution structured illumination microscopy
Joseph R. Hamiliton, Summer K. Levis, Guy M. Hagen

Quantifying optical sectioning in reflection microscopy with patterned illumination
Cathie Ventalon, Agathe Nidriche, Delphine Débarre

A Modular In-Incubator Microscope for Longitudinal Live Cell Microscopy
Drew Ehrlich, Yohei Rosen, Santhosh Arul, John Minnick, Seth Nicholson, Kateryna Voitiuk, Spencer Seiler, Anna Toledo, Samira Vera-Choqqueccota, Neil Doherty, Jess Sevetson, Max McGlynn, Kivilcim Doganyigit, Maryam Moarefian, Sri Kurniawan, Mohammed A. Mostajo-Radji, Sofie R. Salama, Ethan Winkler, David Haussler, Mircea Teodorescu

Figure extracted from Ehrlich, *et al.* The image is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0 International license.

Nanodiamonds for spatial resolution benchmarking in two-photon microscopy
Filip Janiak, Michael Forsthofer, Jakub Czubek, Małgorzata Szczerska, Tom Baden

The generation and validation of a de novo-designed titin binder for use in fluorescence microscopy
Martin Rees, Andrew Beavil, Melissa Amerudin, Ay Lin Kho, Mark Pfuhl, Alicia Cuber Cabellero, Pauline Bennett, Yaniv Hinits, Heinz Jungbluth, Mathias Gautel

In vivo aberration measurement and correction for ultrafast FACED two-photon fluorescence microscopy of the brain
Jun Zhu, Ryan G. Natan, Jian Zhong, Iksung Kang, Na Ji

Wash-Free Multi-Target Super-Resolution Microscopy with Photocaged DNA Labels
Nina Kaltenschnee, Marina S. Dietz, Laurell F. Kessler, Yunqing Li, Janik Kaufmann, Alexander Heckel, Mike Heilemann

Figure extracted from Kaltenschnee, et al. The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Broadband backscattering confocal microscopy enables label-free 3D live cell nanoscale sensitive imaging
Mark F. Coughlan, Lei Zhang, Rebecca T. Perelman, Umar Khan, Xuejun Zhang, Paul K. Upputuri, Yuri N. Zakharov, Le Qiu, Lev T. Perelman

Quantitative Expansion Microscopy for In Situ Estimation of Endogenous Target Abundance
Matthew D. Lycas, Juan C. Landoni, Benedetta Noferi, Christian E. Zimmerli, Kyle M. Douglass, Suliana Manley

Figure extracted from Lycas, et al. The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

X-ray fluorescence microscopy exposure estimates using a single excitation energy
Benjamin Roter, Andrew M. Crawford, Thomas V. O’Halloran, Chris Jacobsen

Versatile high-speed volumetric imaging from microscopic to macroscopic scale by self-adaptive oblique plane microscopy
Dominique Meyer, Grant Kroeschell, Xiankun Lu, Linh Hoang, Haochen Wang, Shuying Li, Yu Kang T. Xu, Lei Tian, Jeff S. Mumm, Dwight E. Bergles, Ji Yi

Label- and slide-free multispectral quantitative epi-illumination deep-UV microscopy
Mingxuan Si, Viswanath Gorti, Aaron D. Silva Trenkle, Arjun Renjith, Brienna E. Heinsz, Gabe A. Kwong, Francisco E. Robles

Ultra-wide-field, deep, adaptive two-photon microscopy for multi-scale neuronal imaging
Mengke Yang, Zhen-Qiao Zhou, Song Lang, Hanqing Zheng, Shuai Chen, Tong Li, Eline Stas, Jess Yu, Long Zhang, Zhi Zhang, Volkan Uzungil, Qinying Liu, Yu Huang, Jing Lyu, Yimei Li, Hongbo Jia, Min Li, Xiaojing Li, Jingwei Li, Yuguo Tang, Yan Gong, Simon R. Schultz

BLIMPS: a technique for tandem biosensor imaging across multiple populations of presynaptic terminals, using lattice light sheet microscopy
Mariana Potcoava, Zack Zurawski, Iris Lu, Simon Alford

Reaction-enabled, highly sensitive super-resolution imaging
Wenxin Zhu, Jiahui Gui, Ao Guo, Ziqing Zhang, Zhenqian Han, Weisong Zhao, Jiandong Feng

Enabling Real-Time Fluctuation-Based Super Resolution Imaging
Miyase Tekpınar, Jelle Komen, Hana Valenta, Ran Huo, Klarinda de Zwaan, Peter Dedecker, Nergis Tomen, Kristin Grußmayer

Membrane-Promoted J-Aggregation of BODIPY Dimers Enables Spontaneous Blinking in Green and Red Channels for Live-Cell Nanoscopy
Sonia Pfister, Sophie Walter, Pascal Didier, Mayeul Collot

Fully genetically encoded low-molecular-weight protein tags with defined shapes for direct molecular identification by cryo-electron tomography
Feng Luo, Rong Sun, Oliver Chalkley, Pingping Li, Qiangjun Zhou

Figure extracted from Luo, et al. The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

A Multimodal Imaging Pipeline for the Discovery of Molecular Markers of Cellular Neighborhoods
Thai Pham, Melissa A. Farrow, Lukasz G. Migas, Martin Dufresne, Madeline E. Colley, Jamie L. Allen, Angela R.S. Kruse, Mark P. de Caestecker, Raf Van de Plas, Jeffrey M. Spraggins

Absorption dipole effects on MINFLUX single molecule localization
Sjoerd Stallinga, Wenxiu Wang, Bernd Rieger

Combinatorial DNA-PAINT
Philipp R. Steen, Luciano A. Masullo, Isabelle Pachmayr, Rafal Kowalewski, Larissa Heinze, Clemens Steinek, Jisoo Kwon, Monique Honsa, Susanne C. M. Reinhardt, Heinrich Grabmayr, Ralf Jungmann

Nonstop nanometric resolution of randomly moving point scatterers with focused light
Thomas A. Hensel, Ole L. Schwarz, Tim Karrasch, Kerstin Göpfrich, Stefan W. Hell

Near-infrared lensless holographic microscopy on a visible sensor enables label-free high-throughput imaging in strong scattering
Emilia Wdowiak, Piotr Arcab, Mikolaj Rogalski, Anna Chwastowicz, Pawel Matryba, Malgorzata Lenarcik, Julianna Winnik, Piotr Zdankowski, Maciej Trusiak

A First Step for Expansion X-Ray Microscopy: Achieving Contrast in Expanded Tissues Sufficient to Reveal Cell Bodies
Logan Thrasher Collins

Widefield two-photon random illumination microscopy (2P-RIM)
Assia Benachir, Xiangyi Li, Eric M. Fantuzzi, Guillaume Giroussens, Thomas Mangeat, Federico Vernuccio, Hervé Rigneault, Anne Sentenac, Sandro Heuke