Blind deconvolution subject to sparse representation for fluorescence microscopy

Blind deconvolution is an effective fluorescence microscopic image processing technique to improve the quality of degraded digital images resulting from photon counting noise and out-of-focus blur. For solving the severely ill-posed problem of deconvolution, in this paper we propose an alternate minimized blind deconvolution method which considers sparse representation as constraint condition to confine the solution space of traditional Richardson–Lucy method and Gaussian model as initial value of point spread function (PSF). We assume that Poisson noise is dominating during the course of imaging. The maximum-likelihood estimation on a fluorescence image and corresponding point spread function (PSF) is developed. By solving the Euler–Lagrange equation of the total cost function, including the data term obtained by the hypothetical Poisson noise distribution model and the regularized term corresponding to the sparse representation constraint, and using gradient descent method we can get the iterative equations of the original fluorescence image and PSF respectively. Compared with the related blind deconvolution methods, our model shows superior performance in terms of both objective criteria and subjective human vision via processing simulated and real fluorescence microscopic degraded images.