Light microscope with novel digital method to achieve super-resolution

An apparatus for reconstructing a wave, comprising:

• a source of electromagnetic radiation;
• a specimen located at a hole within an output plane and illuminated by the source, the output plane including a null region outside the hole over which electromagnetic transmission is occluded;
• a filter comprising multiple sectors configured to receive electromagnetic from the specimen, each sector selectable to substitute for each other during the gathering of data;
• a detector positioned after the filter to receive electromagnetic therefrom, the detector located at a diffraction plane having a conjugate relationship to the output plane for measuring the amplitudes of a wave of the electromagnetic radiation in the diffraction plane for each different filter sector, successively, to provide multiple measured diffraction patterns;
• and
• a processor configured to:
• inverse Fourier-transforming each of the measured amplitudes to produce a respective computed estimate of the phase-shifted wave at the output plane, the computed estimates comprising both amplitude and phase information;
• applying a respective inverse phase filter to each of the computed estimates of the phase-shifted waves to remove the phase-shift introduced by the corresponding phase filter to provide computed estimates of non- phase-shifted waves at the output plane;
• correcting the computed estimates of the non-phase-shifted waves by setting the values of the amplitude and phase to zero for those portions of the computed estimates of the non-phase-shifted waves which correspond to the null region of the output plane to provide a plurality of corrected estimates;
• and
• recovering the amplitude and phase in the diffraction plane of the unmeasured portion of the amplitude distributions of the diffraction patterns based on the corrected estimates,
• whereby the amplitude and phase information of the unmeasured portion is recovered to achieve super-resolution.