PRECISE LOCALIZATION OF FLUORESCENT PROBES WITHOUT NUMERICAL FITTING

A new algorithm for determining the location of a fluorescent probe in the plane is described. Inspired by the Bancroft algorithm for localization in the global positioning system, the technique calculates the position of the probe without the use of a numerical fitting procedure. Numerical simulations are presented which indicate that the precision of the localization is similar to that obtained using the standard method of fitting a Gaussian profile to the measured fluorescence intensity. Moreover, the computational time is two orders of magnitude shorter than when performing such a fit.