Signal to Noise Ratio

This video describes a critical property of images collected with a microscope - the signal to noise ratio. It also provides lots of tips for increasing signal and reducing noise in your images. Enjoy!
References & Resources:
Photon efficiency of imaging modalities: DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2818.2007.01861.x
Maximizing precision of intensity measurements: DOI: 10.1083/jcb.200903097
Detector Noise: www.microscopyu.com/tutorials...
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:58 Why SNR is critical
2:03 Poisson noise
3:43 Detector noise
4:28 Collecting more signal
8:17 Reducing noise
10:37 High contrast is not the same as high SNR!

[@brian_kirk]

Excellent videos! Short and sweet with appropriate visuals to help understanding. Please do more of these! :D

[@DaruoshAghajaney]

What a brilliant lecture. Thank you.

[@olli1492]

Very good Job explaining! This should be higher up in the search list.

[@williamflanagan8003]

Another top quality vid.

[@joelevi9823]

Again..your videos are just amazingly explained so clearly

[@Microcourses]

Thank you so much 😀

[@damiancavazos7043]

Thank you for your videos

[@Walaa918]

Thank you

[@davidkoleckar4337]

awesome, thank you :]

[@kunlin579]

say you're using a 60X objective with a wide field, would binning decrease the resolution? Pixel size w/o binning is probably going to be in the neighborhood of 125nm or so depending on the configuration, and binned pixels will be at least double that, what do you recommend?

[@Microcourses]

Optimal pixel size depends on the numerical aperture of the objective lens (in addition to magnification - there is a microcourse on numerical aperture if you aren't familiar with it) and what you are trying to image (ie, diffraction-limited objects would require a different pixel size than whole cells), so there isn't a standard recommendation. I recommend you post the question on our microscopy discussion forum at forum.microlist.org - it's quite active so you should get some answers there!

[@shivalidongre4123]

This was great! Could you please post a video on Fourier transform?

[@Microcourses]

Thanks! It's on the list of future videos. In the meantime, Bo Huang's video in the iBiology microscopy lecture series is very good.

[@shivalidongre4123]

@@Microcourses thank you! I will check it out

[@taoliu6334]

The curve at 1:30 under noise was used in today's online workshop over Zoom!

[@Microcourses]

Good eye Tao! Talley made those slides, and we all use them. :)

[@Gruemoth]

🦉

[@dummag4126]

increase the subject illumination!!!

[@Microcourses]

Sure, with the trade-off of increased photobleaching, and phototoxicity in live samples.