Model-Based 2.5-D Deconvolution for Extended Depth of Field in Brightfield Microscopy

Abstract--Due to the limited depth of field of brightfield microscopes, it is usually impossible to image thick specimens entirely in focus. By optically sectioning the specimen, the in-focus information at the specimen's surface can be acquired over a range of images. Commonly based on a high-pass criterion, extendeddepth-of-field methods aim at combining the in-focus information from these images into a single image of the texture on the specimen's surface. The topography provided by such methods is usually limited to a map of selected in-focus pixel positions and is inherently discretized along the axial direction, which limits its use for quantitative evaluation. In this paper, we propose a method that jointly estimates the texture and topography of a specimen from a series of brightfield optical sections; it is based on an image formation model that is described by the convolution of a thick specimen model with the microscope's point spread function. The problem is ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2008
• Where: TIP
• Authors: François Aguet, Dimitri Van De Ville, Michael Unser
• Keywords: Image, In-focus Information, In-focus Pixel Positions, TIP 2008