The meaning of super-resolution
Ronald G. Driggers, Keith A. Krapels, Susan S. Young · Proceedings of SPIE, the International Society for Optical Engineering/Proceedings of SPIE · 2005
Regarding the terminology "super-resolution", there is frequently confusion with respect to the meaning of the word. In fact, some say that the term has been "hijacked" or stolen from its original meaning and is being applied improperly to a newer area of work. The earlier work involved the estimation of spatial information beyond the MTF band-limit of an imaging system (typically the diffraction limit). The newer work involves the use of successive, multiple frames from an undersampled imager to collectively construct a higher resolution image. The former area has to do with diffraction blur and the latter area has to do with sampling. In this short paper, we describe the nomenclature confusion, the two research areas, present a nomenclature solution proposed by IEEE, and then provide some comments and conclusions.