Time-resolved Hyperspectral Single-pixel Camera Implementation for Compressive Wide-Field Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging

Single-pixel imaging based on compressive sensing theory has been a highlighted technique in the biomedical imaging field for many years. This interest has been driven by the possibility of performing microscopic or macroscopic imaging based on low-cost detector arrays, increased SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) in the acquired data sets and the ability to perform high quality image reconstruction with compressed data sets by exploiting signal sparsity. In this work, we present our recent work in implementing this technique to perform time domain fluorescence-labeled investigations in preclinical settings. More precisely, we report on our time-resolved hyperspectral single-pixel camera for fast, wide-field mapping of molecular labels and lifetime-based quantification. The hyperspectral single-pixel camera implements a DMD (Digital micro-mirror device) to generate optical masks for modulating the illumination field before it is delivered onto the sample and focuses the emission light signals into a multi-anode hyperspectral time-resolved PMT (Photomultiplier tube) to acquire spatial, temporal and spectral information enriched 4-D data sets. Fluorescence dyes with lifetime and spectral contrast are embedded in well plates and thin tissues. L-1 norm based regularization or the least square method, is applied to solve the underdetermined inverse problem during image reconstruction. These experimental results prove the possibility of fast, wide-field mapping of fluorescent labels with lifetime and spectral contrast in thin media.