Asynchronous Event-Based Spectroscopy for Microsecond-Resolved Spectral Reconstruction

TL;DR

This paper introduces an event-based spectrometer capable of microsecond temporal resolution, surpassing traditional frame-based systems, and demonstrates its effectiveness in high-speed spectral measurements and microfluidic applications.

Contribution

The work develops a novel event-driven spectroscopic system that achieves microsecond resolution and validates its performance in dynamic and low-light conditions.

Findings

Spectral reconstruction at tens of kHz probing rates.

Accurate preservation of spectral peak positions.

Successful tracking of spectral changes in microfluidic experiments.

Abstract

Many physical and chemical processes of interest evolve on timescales that push the limits of conventional spectroscopic instrumentation. Indeed, the temporal resolution of standard spectrometers is often insufficient to track these dynamics, which is connected to the fact that most systems rely on frame-based sensors, imposing fundamental constraints on acquisition speed, sensitivity, and data efficiency, frequently limiting practical operation to the kHz regime. In this work, we present an approach to circumvent this limitation by developing an event-based spectrometer to enable spectral reconstruction with microsecond temporal resolution by leveraging a Czerny-Turner configuration combined with asynchronous and event-driven sensing. A dedicated signal processing pipeline converts the resulting stream of binary events into calibrated spectra through temporal accumulation, geometric correction, and vertical spatial integration of the spectral line, covering a 234nm bandwidth in the visible range with a spectral resolution of approximately 0.18nm per pixel. Performance characterization under temporally modulated illumination demonstrates that the event-based spectrometer can reconstruct spectra at probing rates of up to tens of kilohertz, far exceeding the practical limits of a conventional frame-based spectrometer operated in parallel, while accurately preserving spectral peak positions and relative spectral features. Finally, to further illustrate its potential applications, the system is validated in a microfluidic experiment integrated into an inverted microscope, where spectral changes induced by an absorbing dye are tracked with higher temporal fidelity and resolution compared with the frame-based approach. These results establish event-based spectroscopy as a promising paradigm for real-time, high-temporal-resolution spectral measurements in dynamic and low-light applications.