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Comment by nnmg | Hacker News Reader

For anyone interested in 'real' super resolution, we use these techniques to overcome the diffraction limit in microscopy (my field is neuroscience):

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_microscopy

- Stimulated emission depletion microscopy (STED): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STED_microscopy

- stochastic optical reconstruction (PALM/STORM)

- structured illumination microscopy (SIM)

Here is one of my favorite STED imaging papers, looking at the skeleton of neurons: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221112471...

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Another "real" technique I've seen is having sensors that do not have the individual phototransistors layed out in a nice periodic grid pattern but with aperiodic pattern like Penrose tiling (put PTs as vertices of kites/darts).

The interpolation techniques (making a photo out of hardware input) manage to get 10-15x more resolution out of that sensor layout compared to normal grid.

You also avoid Moire patterns with that too.

Wow! The 3D-Sim of the nuclear envelope at the wikipedia article was amazing but seeing the structure in the neuron is astounding. Do you know how long imaging takes for this? I assume the post-processing is slow but will video be possible someday?

I am least familiar with SIM, but you can do live-cell SIM imaging for sure. The processing is a bit computationally intensive but not so bad (and can always be done post-hoc).

The big thing you have to look out for is the light intensity killing the cells or bleaching your signals. One of our collaborators is actively working on on-the-fly SIM processing for live cell imaging.

A quick glance at pubmed it looks like 11Hz was do-able several years ago https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2895555/ and this (sorry paywalled, I've heard sci-hub has the paper...) https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30478322/

STED is promising for live imaging too. Lots of beautiful pictures out there!

Yes, I'm disappointed by the name collision. Is there a tool that makes "real" superresolution photos easy? Is that built into photoshop as well under a different name?

unfortunately not, for real superresolution (i.e. resolving below the diffraction limit of light) all the current methods require expensive (and very dangerous) lasers and microscopes with all sorts of optics widgets, mirrors and computers. Lots of 'high resolution' imaging things are available for cameras, as well as some AI systems that will make up data for you so it looks better too!

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