Image restoration phase-filtering lateral superresolution confocal microscopy

Image restoration phase-filtering lateral superresolution confocal microscopy, a new approach, is proposed to achieve lateral superresolution using a confocal microscope. This approach uses a lateral superresolution pupil filter to preliminarily improve its lateral resolution and uses a single-image superresolution restoration technique based on a maximum likelihood estimate to further improve its lateral resolution. The new approach has the advantages of a low cost and the remarkable superresolution effect without excessive system complexity. Experiments indicate that the proposed approach can improve the lateral resolution of a confocal microscope from 0.3μm to less than 0.1μm when λ ≤ 632.8nm and NA≤0.85.