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 0.3 μm to less than 0.1 μm when λ = 632.8 nm and NA=0.85.