Image formation in structured illumination wide-field fluorescence microscopy.

We present a theoretical analysis of the image formation in structured illumination wide-field fluorescence microscopy (SIWFFM). We show that the optically sectioned images obtained with this approach possess the optical sectioning strengths comparable to those obtained with the confocal microscope. We further show that the transfer function behaviour is directly comparable to that of the true confocal instrument. The theoretical considerations are compared with and confirmed by experimental results.