Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Measurement - Isis Project No 1435

A new method of measuring fluorescence lifetime of fluorophores which gives rapid and accurate results without the need for expensive instrumentation.

Market Opportunity

Measuring the fluorescence lifetime of a fluorophore is becoming increasingly important for characterizing the physical and chemical natures of an environment e.g. ph, viscosity etc.

Fluorescence lifetime is important in microscopy, and has found application in DNA sequencing, protein sequencing, semiconductor material characterization by photoluminescence and the detection of fluorescence lifetimes of fluorescent materials used in labels on security marked objects.

Current approaches for fluorescence lifetime measurement suffer from major disadvantages. The use of ultra short laser pulses to excite the fluorescence needs both an expensive short pulse laser and expensive time correlated single photon counting techniques. Harmonically modulating the intensity of the illumination requires complicated electronics, and it is difficult to extract multiple lifetime data.

A new method for measuring fluorescence lifetime which overcomes the problems of the current techniques would create new applications and open up significant new markets.

The Oxford Invention

The new Oxford method for fluorescence lifetime measurement has the advantages of:

• rapidly and accurately determining the fluorescence lifetime of the fluorophore without the need for expensive equipment;
• using all the detected light as the detector operates continuously allows a much lower intensity light source to be used, and avoids the risk of ‘bleaching’ photo-sensitive samples; and
• the fluorescence lifetimes of two different fluorophores can be determined.

Patent Status

This work is the subject of a patent application, and Isis would like to talk to companies able to develop this technology further. Please contact the Isis Project Manager to discuss this opportunity.

Request Further Information: Project Number 1435 - Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Measurement