Enhancement of rapid lifetime determination for time-resolved fluorescence imaging in forensic examination

An enhancement method of rapid lifetime determination is proposed for time-resolved fluorescence imaging to discriminate substances with approximate fluorescence lifetime in forensic examination. In the method, an image-exclusive-OR treatment with filter threshold adaptively chosen is presented to extract the region of interest from dual-gated fluorescence intensity images, and then the fluorescence lifetime image is reconstructed based on the rapid lifetime determination algorithm. Furthermore, a maximum and minimum threshold filtering is developed to automatically realize visualization enhancement of the lifetime image. In proof experiments, compared with traditional fluorescence intensity imaging and rapid lifetime determination method, the proposed method automatically distinguishes altered and obliterated documents written by two brands of highlighters with the same color and close fluorescence lifetime.