We propose a new design for a multi-color, parallelized STED microscope, capable of multiple beam scanning.
Our design is based on a common programmable diffracting optical element used to split, shape, and align both the excitation beams as well as the depletion beams, and a CCD camera to image florescence from all scanning beams simultaneously.  We implemented a prototype of our novel design constituting a two beam STED. Our setup can easily be generalized to multi-color STED, with up to 100 parallel scanning beams given enough laser power. High rate STED imaging up to 72 fps of a 20x20 um field of view can be achieved with the use of a high-speed response multianode photomultiplier detector.