Abstract
Three-dimensional imaging is affected by depth-induced spherical aberration (SA) when imaging deep into an optically thick sample. In this work, we evaluate the impact of SA on the performance of incoherent grating-projection structured illumination microscopy (SIM). In particular, we analyze the reduction of the contrast in the structured pattern and compare the reconstructed SIM images for different amounts of SA. In order to mitigate the impact of SA, we implement and evaluate in SIM a wavefront encoded imaging system using a square cubic (SQUBIC) phase mask, an approach shown previously to be successful in conventional microscopy.