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Structured illumination microscopy (SIM) breaks the resolution limit caused by optical diffraction, and nonlinear SIM can further improve the resolution with nonlinear effect. However, current nonlinear SIM methods such as Saturated SIM and Photo-switching SIM are unsatisfactory in biomedical imaging. The stimulated emission depletion (STED) effect is considered as a great nonlinear effect with fast switching response, negligible stochastic noise during switching, low shot noise and theoretical unlimited resolution. We propose an original nonlinear structured illumination microscopy based on both patterned excitation illumination and structured STED field (SSTED-SIM). Theoretical study and simulation results demonstrated that SSTED-SIM is capable of providing the ability of fast imaging speed, and low imaging noise at the same time compared with other nonlinear SIM techniques.
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