Improving z-tracking accuracy in the two-photon single-particle tracking microscope

Journal Article · Mon Oct 12 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4932224· OSTI ID:22482259

Liu, C.; Liu, Y. -L.; Perillo, E. P.; Jiang, N.

Here, we present a method that can improve the z-tracking accuracy of the recently invented TSUNAMI (Tracking of Single particles Using Nonlinear And Multiplexed Illumination) microscope. This method utilizes a maximum likelihood estimator (MLE) to determine the particle's 3D position that maximizes the likelihood of the observed time-correlated photon count distribution. Our Monte Carlo simulations show that the MLE-based tracking scheme can improve the z-tracking accuracy of TSUNAMI microscope by 1.7 fold. In addition, MLE is also found to reduce the temporal correlation of the z-tracking error. Taking advantage of the smaller and less temporally correlated z-tracking error, we have precisely recovered the hybridization-melting kinetics of a DNA model system from thousands of short single-particle trajectories in silico. Our method can be generally applied to other 3D single-particle tracking techniques.

• OSTI ID: 22482259
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 107, Issue 15; Other Information: (c) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
ACCURACY
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CORRELATIONS
DNA
ERRORS
MAXIMUM-LIKELIHOOD FIT
MELTING
MICROSCOPES
MONTE CARLO METHOD
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PHOTONS
TRAJECTORIES