Reliable Imaging of Dynamic Structures in Live-Cell Super-Resolution

Super-resolution imaging by single-molecule localization is a powerful tool for visualizing structures inside of cells that are smaller than the diffraction limit. However, imaging in living matter poses a challenge because structures can be mobile and dynamic, yet single-molecule localization microscopy can require a long time to generate images. In this talk, I will present a metric for assessing image reliability, based on robust estimation of the density of detected molecules. This simple metric quantitatively defines the tradeoff between spatial and temporal resolutions, and their relationships to acceptable levels of noise in density estimation. I will discuss how this implies variations in resolution across a data set, and present a tool for visually assessing data quality.