Time-resolved confocal microscopy using lanthanide centred near-IR emission

Abstract

A method to uniquely identify signals originating from probes with different emission decay times in luminescence imaging has been developed. By using scanning confocal microscopy in combination with time-correlated single photon counting (TCSPC), Photon Arrival Time Imaging (PArTI) has been realised through off-line plotting of images using the photon arrival times. PArTI is the time-equivalent to spectrally resolved imaging, replacing the energy axis with a photon arrival time axis. Here, lanthanide probes were used to demonstrate the key advantages of the method. PArTI uses TCSPC data, involves no fitting, uses a single pulsed laser line for multicolour imaging, and can be used with a 100 millisecond dwell time per pixel.