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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2010 May 5.
Published in final edited form as: Proc SPIE Int Soc Opt Eng. 2005;5699:426–435. doi: 10.1117/12.587878

Figure 3.

Figure 3

The figure shows the behavior of the limit of the localization accuracy of the z0 coordinate of a single-molecule/point-source as a function of defocus distance. Panel A shows the fundamental limit of the 3D localization accuracy (●) δz03d that is given in eq. 9. Panel B shows the limit of the 3D localization accuracy for z0 for a pixelated detector in the absence of noise sources (○), and panel C shows the same in the presence of noise sources (◇). Panels B and C also show the 3D fundamental limit δz03d (●) and the limit of the 3D localization accuracy of z0 in the absence of noise z0 sources (○), respectively for reference. Note that unlike the x0 coordinate (see Fig. 2), the limit of the 3D localization accuracy for the z0 coordinate becomes infinitely large as the defocus distance approaches zero. The numerical values for generating the above plots are identical to those used in Fig. 2.