Modern Statistical Challenges in High-Resolution Fluorescence Microscopy

Conventional light microscopes have been used for centuries for the study of small length scales down to approximately 250 nm. Images from such a microscope are typically blurred and noisy, and the measurement error in such images can often be well approximated by Gaussian or Poisson noise. In the past, this approximation has been the focus of a multitude of deconvolution techniques in imaging. However, conventional microscopes have an intrinsic physical limit of resolution. Although this limit remained unchallenged for a century, it was broken for the first time in the 1990s with the advent of modern superresolution fluorescence microscopy techniques. Since then, superresolution fluorescence microscopy has become an indispensable tool for studying the structure and dynamics of living organisms. Current experimental advances go to the physical limits of imaging, where discrete quantum effects are predominant. Consequently, this technique is inherently of a non-Gaussian statistical nature, and we argue tha...