Super-resolution in confocal scanning microscopy: II. The incoherent case

Abstract

In several previous papers we have shown that the resolution of a confocal scanning microscope can be improved by recording the full image at each scanning point and then inverting the data. Thse analyses were restricted to the case of cohrent illumination. In this paper we investigate, along similar lines, the incohrent case, which applies to fluorescence microscopy. We investigate the one-dimensional and twodimensional square-pupil problems and we prove, by means of numerical computations of the singular value spectrum and of the impulse response function, that for a signal-to-noise ratio of, say, 10%, it is possible to obtain an improvement of approximately 60% in resolution with respect to the conventional incohrent light confocal microscope. This represents a working bandwidth of 3.5 times the Rayleigh limit.