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Abstract Multifocal microscopy enables high-speed three-dimensional (3D) volume imaging by using a multifocal grating in the emission path. This grating is typically designed to afford a uniform illumination of multifocal subimages for a single emission wavelength. Using the same grating for multicolor imaging results in non-uniform subimage intensities in emission wavelengths for which the grating is not designed. This has restricted multifocal microscopy applications for samples having multicolored fluorophores. In this paper, we present a multicolor multifocal microscope implementation which uses a Spatial Light Modulator (SLM) as a single multifocal grating to realize near-uniform multifocal subimage intensities across multiple wavelength emission bands. Using real-time control of an in-situ-optimized SLM implemented as a multifocal grating, we demonstrate multicolor multifocal 3D imaging over three emission bands by imaging multicolored particles as well as Escherichia coli ( E. coli ) interacting with human liver cancer cells, at $$\sim 2.5$$ ∼ 2.5 multicolor 3D volumes per second acquisition speed. Our multicolor multifocal method is adaptable across SLM hardware, emission wavelength band locations and number of emission bands, making it particularly suited for researchers investigating fast processes occurring across a volume where multiple species are involved. 

Multifocal microscopes (MFMs) are becoming increasingly popular in fluorescence microscopy due to their high speed three-dimensional (3D) imaging capabilities. Conventional MFMs use a fixed fabricated grating as the multifocal grating but these are limited to a restricted wavelength range and a fixed object-plane separation. Spatial light modulators (SLMs) represent an alternative to fabricated gratings due to their real-time programmability, providing complete control over emission wavelength range and object plane separations. However, algorithms commonly used to obtain multifocal grating patterns which provide uniform intensity across the subimages are not directly applicable to SLM-based MFMs due to inherent pixel-to-pixel crosstalk effects present in the SLM chip. We recently developed an in-situ iterative algorithm which generates grating patterns that provide near-uniform illumination of the subimages in SLM-based MFMs. This algorithm is universal across wavelengths, object-plane separations, and SLM manufacturers. As part of our efforts to develop an SLM-based MFM that can respond rapidly to changing experimental parameters, we implement a gradient descent-based optimization method. We evaluate its performance in comparison with a grid search based routine. Experimental results obtained on a custom-made SLM-based MFM indicate that the grid-search optimized grating patterns provide superior subimage intensity uniformity versus the gradient-descent method. These experiments also provide an insight into the energy landscape involved in these optimizations. This study increases the utility of SLM-based MFMs in high-speed imaging.