<title>Phosphorescence lifetime measurement using confocal microscopy</title>

Abstract

ABSTRACT The continuous light coming from the Argon Gas Ion Laser can be converted to pulse light when an optical chopper is equipped. The sample is excited by the pulse light in the confocal microscopy system. The light intensity of the excitation light and the phosphorescence is simultaneously recorded in terms of gray value by the confocal microscopy system. The phosphorescence lifetime measurement can be realized with time-resolved analysis for the phosphorescence intensity decay. The different decay lifetimes of the Oxy-Phor R2 sample under different oxygen concentration are measured with the reconstructed confocal microscopy system. Keywords: Phosphorescence lifetime; Confocal microscopy imaging; Time-resolved analysis 1. INTRODUCTION The status of oxygen metabolism in biological tissues reveals the physiological function of the organism and the measurement of the oxygen concentration in blood circulation is very important for the studies in life science 1-4 . The confocal microscopy has high spatial resolving power, however, whether structure imaging or function imaging on the The confocal microscopy system is based on the light intensity. For the instability of the light source, it is difficult to measure the oxygen concentration accurately on the confocal microscopy. Fortunately, phosphorescence lifetime measurement technology has provided us with an effect method for the oxygen concentration measurement. In the blood oxygen is the only significant quenching agent, with the degree of quenching dependent on the concentration of oxygen in the vicinity of the phosphorescent molecule. According to the Stern-Volmer equation