Fluorescence microscopy allows researchers to study specific structures in complex biological samples. However, the image created using fluorescent probes suffers from blurring and background noise. The latest work from NIBIB researchers and their collaborators introduces several novel image restoration strategies that create sharp images with significantly reduced processing time and computing power1. The cornerstone of modern image processing is the use of artificial intelligence, most notably neural networks that use deep learning to remove the blurring and background noise in an image. The basic strategy is to teach the deep learning network to predict what a blurry, noisy image would look like without the blur and noise. The network must be trained to do this with large datasets of pairs of sharp and fuzzy versions of the same image. A significant barrier to using neural networks is the time and expense needed to create the large training data sets.
