Analysis of super-resolution via 3D structured illumination intensity correlation microscopy. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • Intensity correlation microscopy (ICM), which is prominently known through antibunching microscopy or super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI), provides super-resolution through a correlation analysis of antibunching of independent quantum emitters or temporal fluctuations of blinking fluorophores. For correlation order m the PSF in the signal is effectively taken to the mth power, and is thus directly shrunk by the factor m. Combined with deconvolution, a close to linear resolution improvement of factor m can be obtained. Yet, analysis of high correlation orders is challenging, which limits the achievable resolutions. Here we propose to use three dimensional structured illumination along with mth-order correlation analysis to obtain an enhanced scaling of up to m + m = 2m. Including the stokes shift or plasmonic sub-wavelength illumination enhancements beyond 2m can be achieved. Hence, resolutions far below the diffraction limit in full 3D imaging and with already low correlation orders, can potentially be achieved. Since ICM operates in the linear regime our approach may be particularly promising for enhancing the resolution in biological imaging at low illumination levels.

published proceedings

  • Opt Express

altmetric score

  • 6.7

author list (cited authors)

  • Classen, A., von Zanthier, J., & Agarwal, G. S.

citation count

  • 11

complete list of authors

  • Classen, Anton||von Zanthier, Joachim||Agarwal, Girish S

publication date

  • October 2018