PicoQuant has developed rapidFLIMHiRes which enables the imaging of samples at up to 15 frames per second with a time resolution of 10 ps using Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging (FLIM). rapidFLIMHiRes provides both rapid data acquisition and high time-resolution when studying fast processes such as protein interactions, FRET dynamics, ion fluxes or quickly moving species.
The rapidFLIMHiRes approach exploits a series of hardware capabilities recently introduced by PicoQuant to overcome the limitations of classic, Time-Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) based FLIM: namely hybrid photomultiplier detectors capable of handling count rates of about 78 Mcps, the MultiHarp 150 4P TCSPC module with four parallel detection channels, a dead time of 650 ps and time bin widths as small as 10 ps. Furthermore, the SymPhoTime data acquisition and analysis software has been updated with memory management and processing time improvements as well as correction algorithms to reduce decay curve distortions due to very high count rates and artefacts of the detector pulse pile-up. The SymPhoTime 64 software stores all raw photon timing information in the portable TTTR file format, so that no data is lost and can always be analysed with a broad array of commercial and open source tools.
All components required for rapidFLIMHiRes are available either individually, as part of a PicoQuant Laser Scanning Microscopy (LSM) Upgrade Kit for systems from Nikon, Olympus, Scientifica or Zeiss and as a special configuration of PicoQuant’s MicroTime 200 confocal time-resolved microscopy platform.
