A miniaturized apparatus based on a smartphone for microsecond-resolved luminescence lifetime imaging

Time-resolved luminescence imaging is usually operated on Lab instruments equipped with high-speed excitation sources and detectors, which are always bulky and expensive. In order to miniaturize the instrument and reduce the cost, a FPGA (field programmable gate array) -based digital circuit was designed to control a mechanical chopper and a UV-LED for time-gated luminescence imaging. By utilizing a smartphone as a camera, the luminescence lifetime imaging of mouse kidney sections dyed by two europium complexes was successfully accomplished, demonstrating a temporal resolution of tens of microseconds. It is the first time that microsecondresolved luminescence lifetime imaging was achieved with a smartphone. We believe this miniaturized apparatus can provide many opportunities for time-resolved luminescence detection and imaging for eliminating the background signals from scattering and short-lived autofluorescence.