Generating Images from flourescence decay curves

[Muttee]

Hello everyone,

I am designing a labview module for our TCSPC (Time Correlated Single Photon Counting) Laser Microscope. We purchased the labview library for our photon counter from becker-hickl. I tried to use their library to make a labview module that could generate images but could not succeed. The library comes with a measurement example that generates one flourescence decay curve for each image point. For a 256*256 pixel image, that is 65536 curves, I want to obtain an image by averaging each curve. This is why I need an imaging routine. I was wondering if anyone has done this in the past or could help me know where to start. In the example, there is a matrix that actually plots the curve.

Please let me know if you have any more questions regarding the photon counter, the model is SPC-830 from Becker-Hickl.

Thanks,

- Muttee Sheikh

[altenbach]

If I understand you right, you want to reduce each decay curve into a single greyscale (or colormap) value. Obviously, there will be some loss in information, because you will not be able to reconstruct the "curve" from a single number.

All you need is to loop over all your decay curves and create a properly scaled 2D array. This you then can send to a picture indicator or intensity graph. Most likely, the raw data is already arranged e.g. as a 3D array, so all you need to do is autoindex over two stacked FOR loops, take the average of each decay curve, and autoindex out to get the 2D array you need.

Can you attach a simple example containing your raw data so we can see how things are layed out?

[Muttee]

In the example, there is a 2D array that is used to plot a waveform graph. I have attached the graph i get when i run it in simulation mode. I have also attached an image of what i should get.

Thanks...

[altenbach]

The image "wahtIhave" just shows the graph of a 4x1024 size 2D arrray. This seems like less data than the 256x256x"Decay data" you were talking about earlier. What do the four rows represent? What does the data in each row represent?

[Muttee]

Hey,

Sorry for not clarifying in my last message, as i did more research in the example, i found out that this example shows the decay curve of one point at a time. So to gather 256*256 pixels, i will have to loop it that many times. Each curve represents the number of photons collected over time...

Looks like this will not be an efficient solution to gather an image so i will try to make my own routine to gather a whole *page* that has 256*256 blocks of curves. In that case, If i average the data for each block...will it be sufficient to use "Flatten to pixmap" to plot the picture?

Thanks again..

[altenbach]

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@Muttee wrote:

.will it be sufficient to use "Flatten to pixmap" to plot the picture?

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Yes, that should work. You could even use "draw unflattend pixmap" directly, eliminating the middleman. 😉

Make sure you scale the data correctly and use the proper polymorphic instance. I would use the 8bit version and give it a greyscale color map.