Most Popular Microscopy Techniques in the World Today

Many microscopy techniques have been developed in life sciences to study biological organisms and their underlying biochemical and molecular processes. Therefore, life science research can span many orders of magnitude in scale, from studying single molecules through to whole model organisms.

A wide range of microscopy techniques are available for life science research. The figure below provides a summary of the range of experimental methods available, shown as a function of their field of view and lateral resolution. Please see the table below for a detailed description of acronyms used in field of microscopy.

In the table below some of the common acronyms and their full names are detailed. Links to articles in our learning centre provide a more in-depth description of the techniques and their applications in life science research. It should be noted that CLEM is a mix of various electron and light microscopy techniques, not a single, well-defined application. More information can be found in the review by Boer et al.

Common acronym	Full name
CLEM	Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy
CLSM	Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy
FCS	Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy
FRET	Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer Microscopy
LSFM	Light Sheet Fluorescence Microscopy
PALM	Photoactivated Localization Microscopy
SDCLM	Spinning Disk Confocal Laser Microscopy
SEM	Scanning Electron Microscopy
SIM	Structure Illumination Microscopy
SPIM	Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy
SRRF	Super-Resolution Radial Fluctuations
STED	Stimulated Emission Depletion
STORM	Stochastic Optical Reconstruction Microscopy
TEM	Transmission Electron Microscopy
TIRF	Total Internal Reflectance Fluorescence Microscopy