Fig. 2: SMLFM consistently outperforms other 3D-SMLM techniques at correctly identifying and reconstructing single emitters at increasing densities.
a Representative snapshots of simulated raw localization data (100 frames, n = 3) in a 10 × 10 μm2 zoomed region for each imaging modality discussed herein (2D, astigmatism, double helix PSF, light field [central view] and tetrapod PSF). The scale bar represents 2 μm. DoF indicates the depth of field achieved by each technique. b Top: Average positive predictive value (PPV) curves for each SMLM technique as a function of emitter density (ρloc) at 4000 detected photons, where PPV refers to the number of true positive localizations vs. total number of fitted localizations. Bottom: Average sensitivity curves as a function of ρloc at 4000 detected photons, where sensitivity refers to the number of true positive localizations vs. the total number of ground-truth localizations. Light and dark-shaded regions represent the first and second standard deviations from the mean over three repeats of 100-frame simulated datasets. Example simulated data are presented in Supplementary Movies 1 and 2.
