NADH (Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) is a cofactor for many enzymes and enzymatic activities in living cells. NADH is auto-fluorescent in its free and bound states with different fluorescent lifetimes. This intracellular NADH distribution can be imaged using fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM), either frequency domain or time domain based hardware. Many pioneering studies place NADH as a natural sensor for based oxidation-reduction states, confluency, glucose levels, proliferation, etc. Frequency domain FLIM imaging aided with phasor representation allows one to profile the distribution of NADH in real time and study any changes in terms of spatial coordinates. We investigate two parallel studies based on fingerprints from healthy, cancerous and stromal cells: 1) in-vitro cellular environments and following migrating cells in a 3D extracellular matrix 2) in-vivo autofluorescence study of tissues. We use different methods such as spectral phasors (two dimensional phasor plots for spectral images), optical redox ratio (Flavin Adenine Dinucleotide/NADH) and metabolic FLIM phasor signature in the characterization of metabolic states. We use these methods into demonstrate new findings in cancer and stromal cells co-cultures. These imaging and characterization methods promise next generation non-invasive clinical studies and diagnostics.