Precise multi-emitter localization method for fast super-resolution imaging.

We present a method that can simultaneously locate positions of overlapped multi-emitters at the theoretical-limit precision. We derive a set of simple equations whose solutions give the maximum likelihood estimator of multi-emitter positions. We compare the performance of our simultaneous localization analysis with the conventional single-molecule analysis for simulated images and show that our method can improve the time-resolution of super-resolution microscopy by an order of magnitude. In particular, we derive the information-theoretic bound on time resolution of localization-based super-resolution microscopy and demonstrate that the bound can be asymptotically attained by our analysis.