A SPAD Based Sensor for Spectrally Resolved Life Time-Detection

The book entitled "A SPAD-based Sensor for Spectrally resolved Life Time-Detection" is part of a combined project between the Department of Physics, University of Trento and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) Research Centre, Italy. The objective of this monograph is to realize a FLIM (Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy) for skin applications capable to give spectral information of the fluorophores excited by the two-photon microscope. In order to achieve such result, two-photon microscope was used located in the Laboratory for Nonlinear Bioimaging and the SPAD-array sensor realized by the SOI-FBK group. In this work the author realized the optical spectrograph setup and developed the code used to analyze the data. The FLIM detector which was used in experimental work has a 64-pixel linear array and each pixel contains four actively quenched Single Photon Avalanche Diode (SPAD)s functioning in parallel. The used sensor is precisely designed for high-speed, time-gated fluorescence measurements. The main features of SPAD arrays that can be exploited in imaging applications are: high sensitivity and ultra-fast response.