Analysis of superresolution via 3D structured illumination intensity correlation microscopy

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel 3D structured illumination technique combined with high-order correlation analysis to significantly enhance superresolution imaging, potentially surpassing current limits in biological microscopy at low illumination levels.

Contribution

It introduces a method combining 3D structured illumination with $m$th-order correlation analysis to achieve resolution scaling up to 2m, surpassing traditional limits in intensity correlation microscopy.

Findings

Resolution scaling up to 2m with structured illumination.

Potential for sub-diffraction resolution in 3D imaging.

Applicable to low illumination biological imaging.

Abstract

Intensity correlation microscopy (ICM), which is prominently known through antibunching microscopy or super-resolution optical fluctuation imaging (SOFI), provides superresolution 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 $m$th power, and is thus directly shrunk by the factor $\sqrt{m}$. Combined with deconvolution a close to linear resolution improvement of factor $m$ can be obtained. Yet, analysis of high correlation orders is challenging, what limits the achievable resolutions. Here we propose to use three dimensional structured illumination along with $m$th-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 can potentially be achieved already with low correlation orders. Since ICM operates in the linear regime our approach may be particularly promising for enhancing the resolution in biological imaging at low illumination levels.