Non-iterative determination of pattern phase in structured illumination microscopy using auto-correlations in Fourier space.

The artefact-free reconstruction of structured illumination microscopy images requires precise knowledge of the pattern phases in the raw images. If this parameter cannot be controlled precisely enough in an experimental setup, the phases have to be determined a posteriori from the acquired data. While an iterative optimisation based on cross-correlations between individual Fourier images yields accurate results, it is rather time-consuming. Here I present a fast non-iterative technique which determines each pattern phase from an auto-correlation of the respective Fourier image. In addition to improving the speed of the reconstruction, simulations show that this method is also more robust, yielding errors of typically less than λ/500 under realistic signal-to-noise levels.