A hardware approach to overcome pile-up in TCSPC: from principles to field verification

Serena Farina; Ivan Labanca; Giulia Acconcia; Ivan Rech

doi:10.1117/12.2663263

15 June 2023 A hardware approach to overcome pile-up in TCSPC: from principles to field verification

Serena Farina, Ivan Labanca, Giulia Acconcia, Ivan Rech

Proceedings Volume 12512, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques XVII; 1251204 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2663263
Event: SPIE Defense + Commercial Sensing, 2023, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

With the development of advanced and dedicated timing instrumentation, Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting (TCSPC) has become the de-facto standard for the measurement of low-light signals in a wide variety of applications, from fluorescence observation in biology to 3D scanning in laser ranging. Despite the huge technical improvements, the historical pile-up limitation still represents an open issue, that reduces the maximum acquisition rate to few percent (1-5 %) of the laser excitation rate. This prevents high-speed and real-time exploitation of TCSPC, thus reducing the range of applications that can benefit from such a powerful technique. To overcome this limitation, in 2017 we proposed a novel theoretical approach based on a time-matching between detector dead time and laser period, and in 2021 we designed the first system implementing this new technique. Preliminary results showed a good accordance between the theoretical framework and practical experiments with standard fluorescence dies up to a rate of 32 Mcps. Since then, we have been working on the exploitation of our system in further practical measurements, to perform a deeper validation of its potential. In particular, we have explored the application of our system into a lidar experiment, as no a-priori knowledge is necessary on the specific type of signal. In this proceeding, we present an overview of our work from the theoretical principles to the field verification.

Conference Presentation

Citation Download Citation

Serena Farina, Ivan Labanca, Giulia Acconcia, and Ivan Rech "A hardware approach to overcome pile-up in TCSPC: from principles to field verification", Proc. SPIE 12512, Advanced Photon Counting Techniques XVII, 1251204 (15 June 2023); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2663263

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