Single-shot time-gated fluorescence lifetime imaging using three-frame images

Abstract

Qualitative and quantitative measurements of complex flows demand for fast single-shot fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLI) technology with high precision. A method, single-shot time-gated fluorescence lifetime imaging using three-frame images (TFI-TGFLI), is presented. To our knowledge, it is the first work to combine a three-gate rapid lifetime determination (RLD) scheme and a four-channel framing camera to achieve this goal. Different from previously proposed two-gate RLD schemes, TFI-TGFLI can provide a wider lifetime range 0.6 ~ 13ns with reasonable precision. The performances of the proposed approach have been examined by both Monte-Carlo simulations and toluene seeded gas mixing jet diagnosis experiments. The measured average lifetimes of the whole excited areas agree well with the results obtained by the streak camera, and they are 7.6ns (N = 7L/min; O < 0.1L/min) and 2.6ns (N = 19L/min; O = 1L/min) with the standard deviations of 1.7ns and 0.8ns among the lifetime image pixels, respectively. The concentration distributions of the quenchers and fluorescent species were further analyzed, and they are consistent with the experimental settings.

The biochemical resolving power of fluorescence lifetime imaging: untangling the roles of the instrument response function and photon-statistics

“…(1) holds, and FLIM could attain the maximum SNR. The analysis of F-values has been applied to compare various implementations of FLIM [5,23] and to optimize imaging parameter [22,[24][25][26].…”

Biochemical resolving power of fluorescence lifetime imaging: untangling the roles of the instrument response function and photon-statistics

“…( 1 ) holds, and FLIM could attain the maximum SNR. The analysis of F-values has been applied to compare various implementations of FLIM [ 5 , 24 ] and to optimize imaging parameters [ 25 – 28 ].…”

Lifetime Determination Algorithms for Time-Domain Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging: A Review

“…For multiexponential decays, RLD can provide average lifetimes which are neither intensifynor amplitude-weighted. Additionally, with three-time gates, the lifetime estimation dynamic range of RLD can be expanded for mono-exponential decays [21]. With four time-gates, we can extract lifetime components of bi-exponential decays [68,69].…”

“…In time-domain approaches, FLIM usually measures a three-dimensional data cube (x-y-t), obtained with a time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) system [13][14][15][16], a time-gated camera [17][18][19][20][21], or a streak camera [22][23][24][25][26][27][28]. A time-resolved histogram h m at (x, y) in a measured data cube can be expressed as:…”