Fluorescence fluctuations-based super-resolution microscopy techniques: an experimental comparative study

Fluorescence fluctuations-based super-resolution microscopy (FF-SRM) is an emerging field promising low-cost and live-cell compatible imaging beyond the resolution of conventional optical microscopy. A comprehensive overview on how the nature of fluctuations, label density, out-of-focus light, sub-cellular dynamics, and the sample itself influence the reconstruction in FF-SRM is crucial to design appropriate biological experiments. We have experimentally compared several of the recently developed FF-SRM techniques (namely ESI, bSOFI, SRRF, SACD, MUSICAL and HAWK) on widefield fluorescence image sequences of a diverse set of samples (namely liposomes, tissues, fixed and living cells), and on three-dimensional simulated data where the ground truth is available. The simulated microscopy data showed that the different techniques have different requirements for signal fluctuation to achieve their optimal performance. While different levels of signal fluctuations had little effect on the SRRF, ESI and SACD images, image reconstructions from both bSOFI and MUSICAL displayed a substantial improvement in their noise rejection, z-sectioning, and overall super-resolution capabilities.