Advanced analysis of single-molecule spectroscopic data

TL;DR

Full SMS is an open-source, GUI-based software for comprehensive analysis of single-molecule spectroscopy data, enabling unbiased statistical analysis, decay fitting, and visualization without programming skills.

Contribution

The paper introduces Full SMS, a versatile, user-friendly software package that integrates multiple analysis tools for single-molecule spectroscopy data in a single GUI environment.

Findings

Supports multiparameter data analysis including brightness, lifetime, spectra

Features extensive data filtering and flexible export options

Designed for efficiency and extendability with open-source Python implementation

Abstract

We present Full SMS, a multipurpose graphical user interface (GUI)-based software package for analysing single-molecule spectroscopy (SMS) data. SMS typically delivers multiparameter data -- such as fluorescence brightness, lifetime, and spectra -- of molecular- or nanometre-scale particles such as single dye molecules, quantum dots, or fluorescently labelled biological macromolecules. Full SMS allows an unbiased statistical analysis of fluorescence brightness through level resolution and clustering, analysis of fluorescence lifetimes through decay fitting, as well as the calculation of second-order correlation functions and the display of fluorescence spectra and raster-scan images. Additional features include extensive data filtering options, a custom HDF5-based file format, and flexible data export options. The software is open source and written in Python but GUI-based so it may be used without any programming knowledge. A multi-process architecture was employed for computational efficiency. The software is also designed to be easily extendable to include additional import data types and analysis capabilities.