Calibration method for the center of mass method to enlarge the solvable range of fluorescence lifetime

Abstract

This paper presents a calibration method for the center of mass method based on rough rapid lifetime determination (RLD) to enlarge the solvable range of fluorescence lifetime. The proposed method defines the ratio of two photon count numbers as a threshold parameter to characterize the length of the sample lifetime. When detecting long lifetimes beyond the threshold, a raw lifetime is estimated first through RLD. Then the raw lifetime is compensated to get a precise one. Simulation results show the solvable range is extended from T/τ>4 to T/τ>1.5 with less than 1% error. The extended range with 40 dB SNR guaranteed enables higher-frequency laser pulses to solve long lifetimes or incomplete decays and has promising biomedical applications, such as quantum dots.

Optimal parameters in variable‐velocity scanning luminescence lifetime microscopy

“…For these reasons, the question of the optimal choice of parameters in different methods of lifetime measurement has been addressed in the past (Ballew & Demas, 1989, Ballew & Demas, 1991; Hall & Selinger, 1981; Good, Kallir, & Wild, 1984; Heeg, 2013, 2014; Köllner & Wolfrum, 1992; Moore, Chan, Demas, & DeGraff, 2004; Peng, Liu, Zhao, & Kim, 2016; Santra et al, 2016; Tellinghuisen & Wilkerson, 1993; Xu, Qiao, Nie, & Zhang, 2016). Theoretical studies of time‐domain methods, where the sample is excited by a short pulse and the decay subsequently detected in a variable number of time channels (gates), have focused on various aspects of the detection scheme: the number of time channels and their widths (Hall & Selinger, 1981; Köllner & Wolfrum, 1992; Moore et al, 2004), the channel overlap (Chan, Fuller, Demas, & DeGraff, 2001; Heeg, 2014; Moore et al, 2004), the effect of different noise distributions (Heeg, 2013, 2014; Tellinghuisen & Wilkerson, 1993), the effect of background (Ballew & Demas, 1991; Köllner & Wolfrum, 1992; Moore et al, 2004; Soper & Legendre, 1994), etc., and have identified the optimal parameters and quantified the expected errors.…”