Reconstruction of an object from diffraction intensities averaged over multiple object clusters

A projection operator is derived for use in iterative phase retrieval algorithms when the Fourier intensity data is an average over the intensity from multiple clusters of identical objects. The projection operator is a generalization of the magnitude projection for conventional phase retrieval for a single object, and is applicable when the relative orientations and positions of the objects within the clusters are known. Simulations demonstrate that an iterative projection algorithm equipped with this new projection operator can successfully reconstruct an object from the averaged Fourier intensities from multiple clusters, each containing multiple copies of the object. (paper)