Microscopy preprints – new tools and techniques in imaging

Posted by FocalPlane, on 7 August 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!

From background to foreground: secondary antibodies coupled to lipophilic ATTO dyes enable high-density membrane labeling in super-resolution and expansion microscopy
Jim Dompierre, Silvia del Pozo Perera, Louis Hurson, Arnaud Mourier, Anne Devin, Manuel Rojo

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

Instant dual-view Snouty (iDV-Snouty) light-sheet microscopy
Alfred Millett-Sikking*

Figure extracted from Millett-Sikking. The image is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.

Protein-based, live-cell PAINT microscopy with fluorogenic exchangeable HaloTag ligands
Tong Zhan, Nels C. Gerstner, Julia G. Martin, Jack T. McCann, Marissa C. Lynch, Hsin-Jung Wu, Ke Xu, Evan W. Miller

Narrow-beam geometry improves the efficiency of cryo-EM
S. Matinyan, P. Filipcik, E. van Genderen, J.P. Abrahams

Three-dimensional field of view of remote focusing microscopy system
Dinesh Saini, Manish Kumar

Nuclear-BRITE: an enhanced MS2 system for live-cell imaging of nuclear RNAs
Adam D. Cawte, Bara Cihlova, Neil Brockdorff

Structural cell biology by mega-expansion microscopy
Ignacio Vega Vasquez, Omar Ignacio Garcia-Martinez, Camila Garcia-Navarrete, Gang Wen, Christian Werner, Patrick Eiring, Jorge A Toledo, Sushovan Chanda, Clinton Gonsalves, Ali H. Shaib, Gislene Pereira, Silvio O Rizzoli, Ricardo Benavente, Philip Kollmannsberger, Markus Sauer

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

A uniform tissue-clearing framework and mesoSPIM-ultra enable cm-scale single-neuron tracing
Marko Pende, Jared M. Cregg, Saiedeh Saghafi, Samuel Broadbent, Alma Avdibasic, Johannes Roeles, Sofia-Christina Papadopoulos, Ryan P. Seaman, Nika Pende, Marta Solano Mateos, Katelyn Jamwal, Melody Wunch, Pawel Pasierbek, Alberto Moreno-Cencerrado, Solomiia Korchynska, Romana Hauer, Paul Anderson, Paul Supper, Maria Eleni Kastriti, Daniel Reumann, Michael Moorhead, Joel H. Graber, Petra Scholze, Julia U. Henschke, Eike Budinger, Jürgen A. Knoblich, Thomas Klausberger, Igor Adameyko, Tibor Harkany, Vivek Kumar, Mary Teena Joy, Ole Kiehn, Hans-Ulrich Dodt, Fabian F. Voigt, Prayag Murawala

A High-Affinity Nanobody Recognizing mNeonGreen Enables Versatile Biochemical, Cellular, and in vivo Applications
Maja Gere-Becker, Lisa-Marie Funk, Marie Gröger, Markus Kilisch, Pardis Najafi, Florian König, Federico Aloisi, Xuanfei Song, Lianne C. Davis, Antony Galione, Sabrina A. Hafeez, Benjamin L. Martin, Eugenio F. Fornasiero, Valeriia Kalienkova, Lisa Reinmuth, Petri Kursula, Hansjörg Götzke, Felipe Opazo, Steffen Frey

Quantitative Motion-Corrected PALM Links Endosome Structure and Dynamics in Live Cells
Yu Xu, Santosh Adhikari, Elias M. Puchner

Monitoring microscope performance in an imaging facility using OMERO-metrics
Sophia Sommer, Oumou Dhmine, Julio Mateos Langerak, Ian M. Dobbie

Development and Characterization of a FRET-based Formin Tension Sensor in Living Cells
Philip Bleicher, John A. Hammer, James R. Sellers, Anjelika Gasilina

Plug-and-Play 3D localization microscopy
Ori Refael Cohen, Dafei Xiao, Reut Orange Kedem, Onit Alalouf, Prakash Joshi, Yuya Nakatani, Anna-Karin Gustavsson, Yoav Shechtman

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

Deep-ultraviolet microscopy reveals biomolecular spatiotemporal intracellular dynamics
Viswanath Gorti, Mingxuan Si, Nathan Taylor, Marcus Cicerone, Francisco E. Robles

Instantaneous Phase-Shifting Optothermal Microscopy for Live-cell Metabolic Monitoring
Jiawang Qiu, Tao Yuan, Francesca Gasparin, Miguel A. Pleitez

Nanobubble-Based Ultrasound Localization Microscopy through Interactive Adaptive Processing
Grigori Shapiro, Yarin Gershman, Mike Bismuth, Tali Ilovitsh

Volumetric Flow Imaging Microscopy to Enhance Particle Characterization
Farhan Khan, Benjamin Gincley, Farshid Khan, Ameet J. Pinto

In situ pulse dispersion estimation via third-harmonic generation interferometric autocorrelation for multiphoton microscopy
Liam Shaughnessy, Lauren Vannell, Sulekh Fernando-Peiris, Cristina Rodriguez

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

Electron counting enables cryo-electron ptychography for near-atomic-resolution cryo-electron microscopy
Shouqing Li, Bo Shen, Zhaoyi Yan, Junjiang Liu, Chenxi Tang, Zhao Wang, Zhi Deng, Xueming Li

Programmable Protein Reference Standards for benchmarking sub-10 nm Fluorescence Microscopy
Made Budiarta, Dominic Helmerich, Marcel Streit, Marvin Jungblut, Sören Doose, Philip Kollmannsberger, Markus Sauer, Gerti Beliu

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

Rapid immunostaining and high-resolution three-dimensional light-sheet microscopy of intact calcified tissues
Zhangfan Ding, Yixin Shi, Hanyu Liu, Chunjie Li, Junyu Chen, Martine Cohen-Solal, Anjali P. Kusumbe

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

Dodecagon light-sheet fluorescence microscopy for large-volume imaging without striping artifacts
Chia-Ming Lee, Po-Yen Lin, Xuejiao Tian, Yijuang Chern, Chih-Jen Cheng, Bi-Chang Chen

HiExM Enables Scalable Mapping of Organelle Morphology and Spatial Heterogeneity
John H. Day, John Farrell, Dandan Yang, Fabricio N. Neira, Elizabeth A. Allen, Ann M. Byrne, Nina C. Leksa, Katherine W. Klinger, Giovanni de Nola, Mushriq Al-Jazrawe, Laurie A. Boyer

High-speed volumetric single-molecule imaging using dual-wavelength light sheets and PSF-engineered enhanced biplane detection
Prakash Joshi, Nahima Saliba, Siyang Cheng, Yuya Nakatani, Dafei Xiao, Reut Orange-Kedem, Yoav Shechtman, Anna-Karin Gustavsson

Adapting the OpenFlexure Microscope for Affordable Live-Cell Imaging
Jodie R Malcolm, Olympia Physouni, Lola K Kelly, Juliana B T Carnielli, Sandy MacDonald, Mark Bentley, Stephen P Howarth, Stuart E Lacy, Alastair P Droop, Matthew Reilly, James P J Chong, Ana Paula C A Lima, Jeremy C. Mottram, Laura Wiggins, William J Brackenbury, Peter J O’Toole

FPGA-based scanner and SerialEM server for 4D-STEM Electron Tomography
Shahar Seifer, Michael Elbaum

Expanding the palette of trehalose-based fluorophores for live mycobacterial detection
Adriann Brodeth, Reena Dosanjh, Lilith A. Schwartz, Sasha Kramer, Sean Goggins, Joel Cresser Brown, Abdulai Zigli, Benjamin M. Swarts, Mireille Kamariza

A mobile optical coherence microscope for studying aquatic organisms in- and outside the laboratory
Ling Wang, Samuel Davis, Tabea Quilitz, Thomas Beavis, Michael Bonadonna, Mantha Lamprousi, Roberto Montanari, Fabian Ruperti, Anniek Stokkermans, Tina Wiegand, Victoria Alicia Witte, Alejandro Gil Ortiz, Michael Dorrity, Jan Siemens, Jacob Musser, Detlev Arendt, Nikolaus Leisch, Flora Vincent, Aissam Ikmi, Robert Prevedel

Optimized cryo-FIB milling strategy to generate thin, minimally damaged biological lamellae
Laina N. Hall, Joshua Paul, Philip Ngo, Bronwyn A. Lucas