Saturated pattern-illuminated Fourier ptychography microscopy

We report a series of simulation studies which extends pattern-illuminated Fourier ptychography microscopy by integrating with the nonlinearity arising from saturation of the fluorophore excited state for super-resolution fluorescence imaging. This extended technique, termed Saturated pattern-illuminated Fourier ptychography (SpiFP) microscopy, could achieve a resolution four times that of wide field when the illuminating light intensity approaches the saturation threshold in simulations. Increasing light intensity leads to further resolution enhancement. In order to demonstrate the performance of SpiFP, we make a comparison between SpiFP and saturated structure illumination microscopy in simulations, and prove that the SpiFP exhibits superior robustness to noise, aberration correcting ability, and pattern's flexibility. Introducing the saturation of the fluorescent emission brings in notable improvements in imaging performance, implying its potential in nanoscale-sized biological observations by wide-field microscopy.