Image reconstruction for structured-illumination microscopy with low signal level

Abstract

We report a new image processing technique for the structured illumination microscopy designed to work with low signals, with the goal of reducing photobleaching and phototoxicity of the sample. Using a pre-filtering process to estimate experimental parameters and total variation as a constraint to reconstruct, we obtain two orders of magnitude of exposure reduction while maintaining the resolution improvement and image quality compared to a standard structured illumination microscopy. The algorithm is validated on both fixed and live cell data with results confirming that we can image more than 15x more time points compared to the standard technique.