Asynchronous-spectral fusion fluorescence microscopy for microsecond-scale behavioral dynamics

TL;DR

This paper presents a fluorescence microscopy system that combines asynchronous event-based sensors with diffraction-encoded measurements, achieving microsecond temporal resolution and spectral discrimination at high frame rates for dynamic biological imaging.

Contribution

The authors introduce a novel fusion microscopy architecture that decouples temporal and spectral sampling, enabling high-speed, spectrally resolved imaging without scanning or filter switching.

Findings

Achieves ~3.9 um spatial resolution over 0.5 mm field of view

Effective temporal resolution down to 100 microseconds

Differentiates fluorophores with emission peaks separated by 23 nm

Abstract

Event-based image sensors provide microsecond temporal resolution but lack spectral discrimination, whereas diffractive spectral imagers encode wavelength information at conventional frame rates. We introduce a fluorescence microscopy architecture that fuses asynchronous event streams with diffraction-encoded CMOS measurements to decouple temporal and spectral sampling. The system achieves ~3.9 um spatial resolution over a 0.5 mm field of view, effective temporal resolution down to 100 us, and differentiates fluorophores whose emission peaks are separated by only 23 nm. By synchronizing and computationally merging both sensing modalities, we enable spectrally resolved tracking at 100,000 frames/s without scanning or filter switching.