title: Quantitative sectioning and noise analysis for structured illumination microscopy.
abstract: Structured illumination (SI) has long been regarded as a nonquantitative technique for obtaining sectioned microscopic images. Its lack of quantitative results has restricted the use of SI sectioning to qualitative imaging experiments, and has also limited researchers' ability to compare SI against competing sectioning methods such as confocal microscopy. We show how to modify the standard SI sectioning algorithm to make the technique quantitative, and provide formulas for calculating the noise in the sectioned images. The results indicate that, for an illumination source providing the same spatially-integrated photon flux at the object plane, and for the same effective slice thicknesses, SI sectioning can provide higher SNR images than confocal microscopy for an equivalent setup when the modulation contrast exceeds about 0.09.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA. nhagen@optics.arizona.edu
authors.forename: Nathan
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Hagen
authors.forename: Liang
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Tomasz S
authors.initials: TS
authors.lastname: Tkaczyk
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000379:methods*; D007090:Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted / Q000379:methods*; D008029:Lighting / Q000379:methods*; D008853:Microscopy / Q000379:methods*; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio