Spectral cross-cumulants for multicolor super-resolved SOFI imaging

Super-resolution opticalfluctuation imaging provides a resolution beyond the diffraction limitby analysing stochasticfluorescencefluctuations with higher-order statistics. Usingnthorderspatio-temporal cross-cumulants the spatial resolution and the sampling can be increased upton-fold in all spatial dimensions. In this study, we extend the cumulant analysis into thespectral domain and propose a multicolor super-resolution scheme. The simultaneousacquisition of two spectral channels followed by spectral cross-cumulant analysis andunmixing increases the spectral sampling. The number of discriminablefluorophore species isthus not limited to the number of physical detection channels. Using two color channels, wedemonstrate spectral unmixing of threefluorophore species in simulations and experimentsinfixed and live cells. Based on an eigenvalue/vector analysis, we propose a scheme for anoptimized spectralfilter choice. Overall, our methodology provides a route for easy-to-implement multicolor sub-diffraction imaging using standard microscopes while conservingthe spatial super-resolution property.