  Imaging is indispensable for nearly every field of science, engineering,
technology, and medicine. However, measurement noise and stochastic distortions
pose fundamental limits to accessible spatiotemporal information despite
impressive tools such as SIM, PALM/STORM, and STED microscopy. How to combat
this challenge ideally has been an open question for decades. Inspired by a
"virtual gain" technique to compensate losses in metamaterials, "active
convolved illumination" has been recently proposed to significantly improve the
signal-to-noise ratio, hence data acquisition. In this technique, the light
pattern of the object is superimposed with a correlated auxiliary pattern, the
function of which is to reverse the adverse effect of noise and random
distortion based on their spectral characteristics. Despite enormous
implications in statistics, an experimental realization of this novel technique
has been lacking to date. Here, we present the first experimental
demonstration. We find that the active convolved illumination does not only
boost the resolution limit and image contrast, but also the resistance to pixel
saturation. The results confirm the previous theories and opens up new horizons
in a wide range of disciplines from atmospheric sciences, seismology, biology,
statistical learning, and information processing to quantum noise beyond the
fundamental boundaries.
