In just over a decade, superresolution nanoscopy technologies have emerged in the forefront of cellular imaging as new powerful and exciting modes to look at structures that could only be visualized by electron microscopy. There is no longer a diffraction barrier to keep scientists from looking at the nanometer size structures at normal experimental conditions, and molecules and organelles within the limits set by light diffraction are now resolvable. These techniques have been further extended to imaging at resolutions of 10s of nanometers of cells in 3D. So where will the field go from here?

It has become clear that progession of the nanoscopic imaging will require an interdisciplinary collaboration between experts in physics and optics, biology, chemistry, and engineering if not others. Some of anticipated and predicted developments in the context of superresolution imaging include but are certainly not limited to:

1) Further developing multi-reporter multicolor imaging as demonstrated by Bates et al. [5]

2) Improving axial resolution by incorporating additional modalities, such as 4Pi and I^5M microscopy.

3) Development of new reporter technologies that are optimized for a particular method or exploit all together different detection scheme.

4) Bridging the gap between light microscopy and electron microscopy

5) Studying new biological systems to discover small nanostructures or fill in ill-defined details

6) Further increasing resolution,..can we obliterate the diffraction barrier???