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Nature Methods 5, 671–672 (1 August 2008) | doi:10.1038/nmeth0808-671

Single-particle tracking: connecting the dots

Michael J Saxton

Single-particle tracking (SPT) is a powerful tool to study the dynamics of heterogeneous systems such as the living cell because SPT locates each particle with subdiffraction resolution and measures its individual dynamics, instead of an ensemble average. SPT exploits the fact that the location of an isolated particle can be measured to much higher accuracy than the Rayleigh limit, even though two particles closer than the Rayleigh limit cannot be resolved unless the signal-to-noise ratio is very favorable.