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

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. Con-temporary 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.