Circuit implementation of fluorescence lifetime measurement using direct exponential-to-linear conversion

Abstract

Measurement of fluorescent lifetime is key in many biological analyses. Recently, we proposed a new scheme for fluorescent lifetime measurement utilizing hardware level linearization of the fluorescent decay produced by an excited fluorphore. This method is less sensitive to equivalent voltage and time errors compared to commonly utilized charge modulation schemes and has no upper limit on lifetime measurement. Here we present results for a hardware level implementation of the proposed scheme for lifetime measurement. Preliminary results demonstrate extraction of lifetimes down to 5/µs.