Accelerating Image Analysis for Localization Microscopy with FPGAs

Localization microscopy enhances the resolution of fluorescence light microscopy by about an order of magnitude. Single fluorescent molecules act as switchable markers. Their detected signals can be fitted with a two-dimensional Gaussian distribution and thus located with sub-pixel resolution. In this paper we propose that these fits can be done by calculating the center of mass instead of an iterative least-square fit without loosing precision. The simplification of the algorithm leads to an acceleration of more than a factor of 100 and enables an FPGA implementation with an additional performance boost by a factor of 225. Our findings allow the real-time processing of current and future image data rates in localization microscopy.