The effect of bit number and sampling rate of a digitizer on least-square multi exponential decay analysis in fluorescence lifetime imaging

We have simulated the effects of the number of bits and the sampling rate of a digitizer on the performance of lifetime measurements. We found that the number of bits of a digitizer is important to obtain certain accuracy in lifetime measurement. There exists a certain critical sampling frequency of a digitizer required to separate a certain lifetime differences in a double exponentially decaying intensity profile. We did these simulations by using Monte Carlo simulations with least-square curve fitting algorithms.