基於光的波動特性，遠場光學顯微術的解析度因為光的繞射而受限於繞射極限，大約為光波長的一半。然而，隨著生醫研究越來越深入生物組織中超過繞射極限範圍的微小結構，對於光學顯微技術解析能力的要求亦逐漸提高，傳統受限於繞射極限的光學顯微術已然不敷使用。因此，光學顯微術的研究團隊興起了一股超解析度的風潮，在短短的二十年間即百花齊放，開發出多種可超越繞射極限的超解析度光學顯微術，並已嘗試運用於生醫的研究上。本文將針對目前在生醫研究上最普遍被應用的遠場超解析度顯微術之一－結構照明顯微術 (structured illumination microscopy, SIM) 進行原理及技術發展的介紹，並探討其在生醫應用上的優點及可能面臨的挑戰。

Based on the wave nature of light, the spatial resolution of far-fi eld optical microscopy is limited by diffraction limit due to diffraction and this limit is about half of the light wavelength. However, as the biomedical researches gain insight into much smaller structures of bio-tissues beyond the diffraction limit, the resolving power requirements of
the optical microscopy also get higher and higher and traditional optical microscopies under diffraction limit are yet to fi ll these requirements. Therefore, superresolution technique became a hot research topic in the fi eld of optical microscopy and in the past two decades, various superrsolution optical microscopies were developed to break the resolution barrier and demonstrated on the biomedical researches. This article focuses on one of the far-fi eld superresolution microscopy, structured illumination microscopy (SIM), which is so far the superresolution technique most commonly applied to the biomedical researches. Both the principles and the development of structured
illumination microscopy are introduced in this article, and in addition, the advantages and the possible challenges of these techniques for biomedical applications are also discussed.