Fig. 2: Adaptive exposure preserves imaging quality.

a Left: Classic constant exposure experiment, in which the same amount of light is sent throughout the experiment. Right: adaptive experiment, in which bacteria are segmented after each frame and the exposure is increased or decreased depending on the measured fluorescence. b Imaging C. glutamicum in brightfield and fluorescence with Wag31 fused to mNeonGreen and localized to the poles (GFP), and with red nile stain. c Left: In the constant exposure experiment, the fluorescence decays. For the adaptive experiment, fluorescence tracks the target value of 3000 arb. units. The experiment is performed in two fields of view (FOV) in parallel. Center: The exposure settings as a function of experiment time. Right: Signal-to-noise ratio as defined by the intracellular fluorescence divided by the background fluorescence as a function of the experiment time. A less severe degradation is obtained with the adaptative strategy.