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Abstract Fourier ptychography (FP) is a high resolution wide‐field imaging method based on the extended aperture in the Fourier space, which is synthesized from raw images with varying illumination angles. If FP is extended to coherent nonlinear optical imaging, the resolution could be further improved due to the increase of the cutoff frequency of the synthesized coherent optical transfer function (C‐OTF) with respect to the order of nonlinear optical processes. However, there is a fundamental conflict between wide‐field FP and nonlinear optical imaging, whereby the nonlinear optical imaging typically requires a focused excitation laser beam with high power density. To tackle the problem, in this work, a unique point‐scanning FP (PS‐FP) method is presented for super‐resolution nonlinear optical imaging, in which the nonlinear optical signal is obtained by using focused laser beam, while the conventional FP algorithm can still be used to retrieve the super‐resolution image. PS‐FP coherent anti‐Stokes Raman scattering (PS‐FP‐CARS) imaging on a variety of samples, where a 1.8‐fold expansion of the OTF is achieved experimentally for enhancing vibrational imaging. Further theoretical calculation shows that the C‐OTF of PS‐FP higher‐order CARS (PS‐FP‐HO‐CARS) can be expanded up to ≈4.9‐fold, thereby improving the spatial resolution by ≈3‐fold in comparison with conventional point‐scanning CARS with under tightly focused beams. The generality of PS‐FP method developed in this work can be adapted to other coherent nonlinear optical imaging modalities for super‐resolution imaging in tissue and cells.
Gong et al. (Fri,) studied this question.