Photon counting - why do people sometimes question its practicality?
I used to use photon counting fairly regularly on our microscope and had no problems. The only problem that would immediately come to my mind would be the low pixel intensity values with low numbers of images.
Low light level images of say maximal 25 photons per pixel will naturally yield pixel values which are low with respect to a ccommon range of 0..255. That does not mean the image is poor in the sense of a poor Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). Since SNR = sqrt(maxPixelCount), it is easy to compute the SNR from a photon counted image: in this case 5. Images with SNR 5 can usually be quite well restored.
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Keywords: photon counting SNR<br>
Categories: Faq Deconvolution, Faq Microscopy, Huygens Faq, Imported Faqs<br>
Platforms: Irix Linux Windows Mac<br>
Related products: Hu Ess Hu Pro<br>
