Precisely and accurately locating point objects is a long-standing common thread in science. Super-resolved imaging of single molecules has revolutionized our view of quasi-static nanostructures . A wide-field approach based on localizing individual fluorophores has emerged as a versatile method to surpass the standard resolution limit. In those techniques, the super-resolution is realized by sparse photoactivation and localization together with the statistical analysis based on point spread functions. Nevertheless, the slow temporal resolution of super-resolved imaging severely restricts the utility to the study of live-cell phenomena. Clearly, a major breakthrough to observe fast, nanoscale dynamics needs to be made. Here we present a super-resolved imaging method that achieves the theoretical-limit time resolution . By invoking information theory, we can achieve the robust localization of overlapped light emitters at an order of magnitude faster speed than the conventional super-resolution microscopy . Our method thus provides a general way to uncover hidden structures below the diffraction limit and should have a wide range of applications in all disciplines of science and technology .
 We present a method that can simultaneously locate positions of overlapped multi-emitters at the theoretical-limit precision. We derive a set of simple equations whose solution gives the maximum likelihood estimator of multi-emitter positions. We compare the performance of our simultaneous localization analysis with the conventional single-molecule analysis for simulated images and show that our method can improve the time-resolution of superresolution microscopy an order of magnitude. In particular, we derive the information-theoretical bound on time resolution of localization-based superresolution microscopy and demonstrate that the bound can be closely attained by our analysis .
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Precisely and accurately locating point objects is a long-standing common thread in science. Super-resolved imaging of single molecules has revolutionized our view of quasi-static nanostructures
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. A wide-field approach based on localizing individual fluorophores has emerged as a versatile method to surpass the standard resolution limit. In those techniques, the super-resolution is realized by sparse photoactivation and localization together with the statistical analysis based on point spread functions. Nevertheless, the slow temporal resolution of super-resolved imaging severely restricts the utility to the study of live-cell phenomena. Clearly, a major breakthrough to observe fast, nanoscale dynamics needs to be made. Here we present a super-resolved imaging method that achieves the theoretical-limit time resolution . By invoking information theory, we can achieve the robust localization of overlapped light emitters at an order of magnitude faster speed than the conventional super-resolution microscopy . Our method thus provides a general way to uncover hidden structures below the diffraction limit and should have a wide range of applications in all disciplines of science and technology
We present a method that can simultaneously locate positions of overlapped multi-emitters at the theoretical-limit precision. We derive a set of simple equations whose solution gives the maximum likelihood estimator of multi-emitter positions. We compare the performance of our simultaneous localization analysis with the conventional single-molecule analysis for simulated images and show that our method can improve the time-resolution of superresolution microscopy an order of magnitude. In particular, we derive the information-theoretical bound on time resolution of localization-based superresolution microscopy and demonstrate that the bound can be closely attained by our analysis