Unstained blood smear contrast enhancement using spectral time multiplexing super resolution

We report the use of Time Multiplexing Super Resolution (TMSR) to reduce significantly speckle noise in spectralimaging microscopy of unstained thin blood smear samples of malaria-infected blood. The method is based on combiningspeckle illumination with a moving array serving as an encoding mask. We propose the use of a new encoding mask toimprove the performance of the conventional TMSR method. The new mask is a two-dimensional generalisation of the one-dimensional Ipatov code. The mask is projected on the object and 13 low-resolution images captured and subsequentlydecoded properly using the same array. The low contrast images are added and extracted from the resultingreconstruction, giving a super-resolved, high-contrast image. The Ipatov filter used in this work performs better than theBarker filter.