Editorial: Phasor analysis for fluorescence lifetime data
Abstract
Fluorescence decay kinetic data provide significant and additional insight for many biological, biomedical, biochemical, and biophysical studies. The fluorescence lifetime is a valuable measurement because of the quantitative information that is imparts, which is largely independent of fluorophore concentration. These measurements are sought after because they reflect a variety of intracellular changes such as molecular interactions, metabolism, and cellular microenvironmental status. The collection of fluorescence decay times has been applied using many advanced analytical techniques including polarization imaging, super-resolution imaging, FRET measurements, and many more. Yet, there is complexity in the interpretation of lifetime data owing to heavy data processing requirements such as data fitting and reduction. Phasor plotting has been trending and emerging as a useful means to simplify fluorescence lifetime analyses. Phasor graphs originated by vectorizing frequency-domain lifetime data, and have been translated from time-domain data as well. As phasor analyses become routine for lifetime data interpretation, understanding how the phasor plot works, the limitations, and benefits thereof, is important for all of bioscience.
Yide Zhang
NIH K99 Postdoctoral Fellow
My research is interdisciplinary and focused on developing new types of optical imaging techniques that could advance the work of other researchers and medical personnel in a wide variety of fields. Currently, I am developing next-generation photoacoustic and ultrafast imaging techniques that can observe biological and physical phenomena that are too fast to be imaged with existing methods. The observation of the ultrafast phenomena could provide a better understanding of the fundamentals of life and physical sciences. I am also developing novel quantum imaging approaches that can investigate biological organisms with an imaging performance that cannot be achieved using classical optical imaging. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, hiking, cycling, and traveling.