Single-shot wide-field optical section imaging

TL;DR

This paper introduces V-HiLo-ED, a single-shot, wide-field optical sectioning method that doubles imaging speed while maintaining high quality, low cost, and broad applicability across various imaging fields.

Contribution

The proposed V-HiLo-ED method enables fast, cost-effective optical sectioning using only one image, extending the HiLo technique with edge detection for broader applications.

Findings

Imaging speed is at least doubled compared to traditional methods.

Maintains high optical sectioning performance with low cost.

Applicable to various non-fluorescence imaging fields.

Abstract

Optical sectioning technology has been widely used in various fluorescence microscopes owing to its background removing capability. Here, a virtual HiLo based on edge detection (V-HiLo-ED) is proposed to achieve wide-field optical sectioning, which requires only single wide-field image. Compared with conventional optical sectioning technologies, its imaging speed can be increased by at least twice, meanwhile maintaining nice optical sectioning performance, low cost, and excellent artifact suppression capabilities. Furthermore, the new V-HiLo-ED can also be extended to other non-fluorescence imaging fields. This simple, cost-effective and easy-to-extend method will benefit many research and application fields that needs to remove out-of-focus blurred images.