Precision of polarization-resolved second harmonic generation microscopy limited by photon noise for samples with cylindrical symmetry

The estimation of parameters in polarization-resolved two-photon microscopy response perturbed by photon noise is analyzed in the context of second harmonic generation for the distribution of molecules presenting cylindrical symmetry. The estimation task is investigated using the Cramer-Rao lower bound for Poisson photon noise. It is shown that a noniterative technique can lead to estimation results that have good efficiencies for most of the physical possible values of the sample parameters for sufficiently high photon levels. The trade-off, between the number of incident polarization states and the total number of measured photons, that can be obtained with the Cramer-Rao lower bound is also discussed. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America