The attainable resolution improvement after deconvolution is strongly dependent on the microscope type, the signal-to-noise ratio and the recording conditions (most importantly: the sampling rate). It will therefore differ per image: for high-signal images, the resolution typically increases by a factor 2 in the axial direction (z) and slightly under 2 in the lateral directions (x and y) when using a theoretical PSF; for noisy images, the increase is more modest, but these images benefit greatly from the noise correction and signal increase resulting from Huygens Deconvolution. In any case, the largest resolution increase is achieved by using a measured PSF. Published work* reveals that resolution increases by nearly a factor 4 axially and over 2 laterally can then be achieved.
*Kano, Hiroshi, Hans T.M. van der Voort, Martin Schrader, Geert M.P. van Kempen and Stefan W. Hell. (1996) Avalanche photodiode detection with object scanning and image restoration provided 2-4 fold resolution increase in two-photon fluorescence microscopy. BioImaging 4 '96 p187-197.
"Table description: The full-width-at-half-maxima (FWHM) in X, Y and Z direction for the bead images, the restored image, and a solid uniformly stained bead of 110 nm diameter. The restoration is performed by a PSF extracted from two bead images using the maximum-likelihood estimation algorithm."
| X (nm) | Y (nm) | Z (nm) | |
| Bead object ("true bead") | 83 | 83 | 83 |
| Bead image | 270 | 265 | 790 |
| Restored bead image | 116 | 93 | 221 |
| Resolution increase | x 2.3 | x 2.8 | x 3.6 |