New method for measuring luminescence lifetime offers breakthrough in scientific imaging

Ac­cel­er­at­ing the pace of dis­cov­ery in sci­ence and in­dustry

22-Oct-2024
Soeren Ahmerkamp, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

A specimen of the seaweed Fucus serratus and the oxygen concentrations on its surface.

Re­search­ers at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy, Leib­niz-In­sti­tute for Baltic Sea Re­search and Uni­versity of Copen­ha­gen in­tro­duce an in­nov­at­ive ap­proach to im­age lu­min­es­cence life­times. This simple ap­proach uses read­ily-avail­able cost-ef­fect­ive equip­ment, pav­ing the way for ad­vanced stud­ies of chem­ical dy­nam­ics in en­vir­on­mental and bio­lo­gical sys­tems. For ex­ample, it al­lows to re­cord oxy­gen dy­nam­ics with much higher tem­poral and spa­tial pre­ci­sion.

Soeren Ahmerkamp, Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology

The setup of the novel approach for imaging the lifetime of luminescent dyes which is based on the frame-straddling technique and allows for an easy implementation.

Take oxy­gen, for ex­ample: Oxy­gen is a key mo­lecule for life, and in or­der to un­der­stand eco­sys­tem dy­nam­ics it can be im­port­ant to fol­low its ways in much de­tail. Op­tical sensors that use lu­min­es­cent dyes have long been used to map oxy­gen levels in mar­ine sys­tems: Oxy­gen re­duces the phos­phor­es­cence life­times of the dyes, which thus in­dic­ate oxy­gen con­cen­tra­tions. However, un­til now, ima­ging lu­min­es­cence life­times has re­quired costly, spe­cial­ized equip­ment, mak­ing the tech­nique out of reach for many re­search and in­dus­trial ap­plic­a­tions. A joint re­search team at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy, Leib­niz-In­sti­tute for Baltic Sea Re­search and Uni­versity of Copen­ha­gen, in col­lab­or­a­tion with in­ter­na­tional part­ners, has de­veloped a pi­on­eer­ing method for ima­ging the life­time of lu­min­es­cent sig­nals. The break­through tech­nique en­ables high-speed lu­min­es­cence life­time meas­ure­ments, trans­form­ing fields that rely on op­tical sens­ing and chem­ical ima­ging. The find­ings have been pub­lished in the journal ACS Sensors.

Bring­ing lu­min­es­cence life­time meas­ure­ment to the masses

“Our new in­teg­rated method sim­pli­fies these meas­ure­ments, al­low­ing re­search­ers to de­term­ine lu­min­es­cence life­times us­ing stand­ard cam­era sys­tems”, ex­plains So­eren Ah­merkamp, who car­ried out the re­search at the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy in Bre­men and at the Leib­niz-In­sti­tute for Baltic Sea Re­search in Warnemünde, both in Ger­many. By syn­chron­iz­ing short bursts of light with pre­cise cam­era tim­ing through a tech­nique called frame-strad­dling, two im­ages are cap­tured: One that re­cords the ini­tial light burst and an­other that meas­ures the ini­tial light burst and the longer-last­ing lu­min­es­cent after-glow. The dif­fer­ence between these im­ages re­veals the in­teg­rated lu­min­es­cence life­time, provid­ing a de­tailed and ac­cur­ate readout at time scales be­low one mil­li­second.

“We of­fer a more ac­cess­ible way to meas­ure lu­min­es­cence life­times, which is of­ten con­sidered the gold stand­ard in op­tical sens­ing”, says Mi­chael Kühl from the Uni­versity of Copen­ha­gen, Den­mark. “By ad­opt­ing the frame-strad­dling tech­nique ori­gin­ally de­veloped for high-speed flow meas­ure­ments, we’ve cre­ated a tech­nique that can be used with a wide range of com­mer­cially avail­able cam­eras. This will make it pos­sible for a wider range of labor­at­or­ies to per­form high-res­ol­u­tion life­time ima­ging.”

Un­lock­ing new pos­sib­il­it­ies in chem­ical ima­ging

The abil­ity to meas­ure lu­min­es­cence life­times with ease and high-speed opens up new pos­sib­il­it­ies for chem­ical ima­ging. Re­search­ers can now re­cord oxy­gen dy­nam­ics with much higher tem­poral and spa­tial pre­ci­sion. “We tracked oxy­gen dy­nam­ics around al­gae within a hun­dredth of a second and visu­al­ized how oxy­gen-con­sum­ing particles move through wa­ter, thereby show­cas­ing the util­ity of the method”, says Ah­merkamp. “The in­teg­rated lu­min­es­cence de­cay method can be used to gain deeper in­sights into how oxy­gen var­ies in mar­ine en­vir­on­ments, from the scale of mi­cro­scopic particles to en­tire eco­sys­tems.”

Ac­cel­er­at­ing the pace of dis­cov­ery in sci­ence and in­dustry

This new ap­proach could stim­u­late more lu­min­es­cence life­time ima­ging ap­plic­a­tions in en­vir­on­mental and bio­med­ical sci­ences and en­gin­eer­ing. By mak­ing high-pre­ci­sion meas­ure­ments more ac­cess­ible, it can stim­u­late novel ex­per­i­mental ap­proaches, ac­cel­er­at­ing the pace of dis­cov­ery in these areas.

“Our goal was to demo­crat­ize ac­cess to a power­ful ana­lyt­ical tool,” adds Ah­merkamp. “We be­lieve this method will en­able re­search­ers to ex­plore com­plex chem­ical in­ter­ac­tions with greater ease and flex­ib­il­ity than ever be­fore.”

Original publication

Other news from the department science

Most read news

More news from our other portals

So close that even
molecules turn red...

See the theme worlds for related content