Patent Document ID: 9134236
Application ID: 12601587
Patent Status: 1

Claim One:
1. Method of fluorescence imaging of a sample comprising: a) illuminating the whole sample with a digital micro-mirror device (DMD) illuminator to excite its fluorescence; acquiring a preview image of the sample and establishing a correlation of the coordinates of the preview image with the coordinates of the components of the DMD, wherein the DMD is connected to a detector via a computer; b) based on fluorescence spectral and spatial information from the preview image, segmenting the preview image into segments of similar spectral properties, thereby obtaining a plurality of image segments, wherein each image segment of the plurality of image segments corresponds to a sub-area of the whole sample region; c) building plurality of masks using coordinates of the components of the DMD corresponding to the sub-areas of the sample region corresponding to the image segments; d) using the mask of each image segment, selectively and sequentially exciting fluorescence of each of the sub-areas of the sample region corresponding to the image segments, and detecting fluorescence signals for the sub-areas of the sample region; e) based on mathematical modeling, determining expected fluorescence parameters comprising expected fluorescence decay parameters or expected fluorescence spectrum parameters from the detected fluorescence signals of each sub-area of the sample region; and f) scanning the whole sample again and determining final fluorescence parameters comprising final fluorescence lifetime parameters or final fluorescence spectrum parameters by using fitting algorithm that use the expected fluorescence parameters determined at step e) as good initial parameters.