Eigen-analysis reveals components supporting super-resolution imaging of blinking fluorophores

Abstract

This paper presents eigen-analysis of image stack of blinking fluorophores to identify the components that enable super-resolved imaging of blinking fluorophores. Eigen-analysis reveals that the contributions of spatial distribution of fluorophores and their temporal photon emission characteristics can be completely separated. While cross-emitter cross-pixel information of spatial distribution that permits super-resolution is encoded in two matrices, temporal statistics weigh the contribution of these matrices to the measured data. The properties and conditions of exploitation of these matrices are investigated. Contemporary super-resolution imaging methods that use blinking for super-resolution are studied in the context of the presented analysis. Besides providing insight into the capabilities and limitations of existing super-resolution methods, the analysis shall help in designing better super- resolution techniques that directly exploit these matrices.