accelerating progress in theaccurate sensor technology to facilitate research. our products help...
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Accelerating progress in the fight against disease.
@photonforce
Based in Edinburgh, Scotland
Photon Force designs, builds and supplies compact scientific sensors that precisely detect and measure single photons – the tiny building blocks of light.
Our mission is to provide innovative, high quality, and accurate sensor technology to facilitate research.
Our products help speed up the research process by streamlining sensor features into a single, simple unit, easily integrated into your existing lab setup.
Photon Force is an Edinburgh-based startup developing revolutionary new time-resolved imaging equipment for the life sciences that is compact, fast, and simple to use.
Founded on over a decade of research at Edinburgh University, Photon Force has developed an integrated image sensor solution which delivers a significant competitive advantage over existing systems.
Until now, single photon detection and timing capabilities have only been available as separate bulky, complex and low-throughput pieces of equipment.
Photon Force changes all that, producing powerful, compact and easy to use tools and placing these within reach of every research lab for the first time.
“The camera is a truly transformative technology that has allowed us to use the picosecond timing resolution to take ultrafast imaging and LiDAR applications to the next level.”Prof. Daniele Faccio, Heriot-Watt University
Our advantage Fluorescence lifetime imaging is a powerful and valuable technique used within the life sciences to deliver information not accessible by steady-state fluorescence techniques. However, equipment used within the industry is bulky, painfully slow and restrictively complicated to put together and use.
Our innovative PF32 system solves all this, taking the detection and timing elements of a time resolved system and miniaturising them down in to a single, mass manufacturable component for the first time, accelerating the rate of data acquisition for customers by orders of magnitude.
In addition to this, our systems are compact and easy to use, taking up less space and being easily operated from a standard laptop computer, with no specialist engineering or physics knowledge.
With proven results from life sciences to physics, the PF32 is light years ahead of the competition, giving customers the potential to greatly improve the speed and efficiency of their time resolved sensing research in a wide variety of fields.
The PF32 system has been featured in several high-profile research publications, including:
• A high speed multifocal multiphoton fluorescence lifetime imaging microscope for live-cell FRET imaging, Simon Poland, Biomedical Optics Express, 6(2), 2015, 277-296.
• Multiplexed Single-Mode Wavelength-to-Time Mapping of Multimode Light, Harikumar Chandrasekharan, arXiv:1604.02495 [physics.optics], 2016.
• 0.5 billion events per second time correlated single photon counting using CMOS SPAD arrays, Nikola Krstajić, Optics Letters, 40(18), 2015, 4305-4308.
• Time-resolved multifocal multiphoton microscope for high speed FRET imaging in vivo, Simon Poland, Optics Letters, 39(20), 2014, 6013–6016.
• Single-photon sensitive light-in-flight imaging, Genevieve Gariepy, Nature Communications, 6:6021, 2015.
• Detection and tracking of moving objects hidden from view, Genevieve Gariepy, Nature Photonics, 10(1), 2015, 23–26.
“A paradigm shift in acquisition of fluorescence lifetime data…there is no longer a need to compromise between accuracy, speed and spatial resolution.”Dr. Simon Poland, King’s College London
The PF32 system The PF32 combines not one, but an array of 1,024 single photon sensitive SPAD pixels with ultra-fast 55ps time resolution electronics, resulting in a powerful, highly compact system. This parallelism allows customers to dramatically accelerate their research across life science fields and beyond.
Key technical specifications
• 32×32 Time Correlated Single Photon Counting (TCSPC) pixel array evaluation / integration kit.
• Fully digital single photon counting and timestamping (no analogue readout noise), with 1% fill factor.
• Wavelength response available on request.
• In-pixel dual mode electronics: photon counting or 55ps resolution 10-bit Time to Digital Converter (TDC) time-stamping (1,023 time bins).
• Pipelined operation: simultaneous data acquisition and readout (no inter-frame dead time).
• Up to 1Mfps sensor operation and readout.
• USB2 (50k frames/s) or USB3 (300k frames/s) transfer to PC.
• Programmable region of interest (permits higher frame rate for subset of pixels).
• Flexible readout timing (permits higher frame rate for reduced number of counter / TDC bits).
• External laser synchronisation input to provide TDC stop signal.
• Optional laser synchronisation output (for laser as slave operation).
• Optional calibration mode to lock TDC resolution to laser or reference frequency.
• Single 5V power supply (included).
Accessories
• Cross-platform Photon Force API for direct camera interface.
• Labview, Matlab, Java and C demo applications.
• Precision machined enclosure.
• Real-time hardware histogram module.
• Real-time rapid fluorescence lifetime estimation (CMM) algorithm.
• XY scanner synchronisation module.
Find out more
Visit our website www.photon-force.com or email us on [email protected] to find out more about the PF32 system and order an evaluation kit. You can also follow us on Twitter for our latest updates @photonforce.
1. FLUORESCENCE LIFETIME IMAGING
Identifying bacteria. Left: intensity imaging shows only structure. Right: fluorescence lifetime adds a new dimension to the data.Image credit: Dr. Tushar Choudhary, University of Edinburgh
2. QUANTITATIVE FRET IMAGING
Utilising the exceptional 55ps time resolution to perform precise, quantitative FRET imaging to unravel complex protein interactions in a cell.Image credit: Dr. Simon Poland, King’s College London
3. LIGHT IN FLIGHT
Customers have exploited the temporal resolution of Photon Force sensors to image light itself, opening new applications such as seeing around corners.Image credit: Prof. Daniele Faccio, Heriot-Watt University
