The following comparison was written with diSPIM in mind, but the main points apply to all types of SPIM.

Spinning disk confocal (SDCM) is just a massively parallel confocal implementation so it's faster but otherwise has the some characteristics as laser scanning confocal.

• Light dose: Confocal has much more photobleaching/phototoxicity than SPIM (i.e. SPIM uses the excitation light much more efficiently). Low light dose is the main motivation for most SPIM users.
  • In general for X slices you need X times as much light for confocal as you do for SPIM.
  • Supplementary Video 2 of Wu et al. is a good comparison of imaging with diSPIM and SDCM; note how quickly the SDCM kills the cells being imaged.
• Z resolution: diSPIM after registration/fusion has best Z-resolution. Next best is confocal, which in turn has better Z resolution than single-view SPIM.
• XY resolution: comparable between confocal and SPIM.
• Speed: SPIM (per view) and SDCM have comparable speed (assuming SDCM has higher laser intensity to make up for the ~3% open area of the spinning disks).