Lightsheet microscopy, otherwise know as Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy (SPIM), utilises a focussed sheet of light to illuminate a specimen. Lightsheet technology is a much gentler illumination technique, resulting in less-phototoxic imaging of samples and is very quick utilising cameras to capture images at high speed.

Lightsheet Z.1 enables samples to be held in a water filled chamber, therefore can be rotated through 360 degrees to enable the best possible illumination from the illumination lens, which sits at at 90 degrees to the image capture lens.