Method and Apparatus for Blind and Reference-Free Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging

A light source may illuminate a scene with amplitude-modulated light. The scene may include fluorescent material. The amplitude modulation may be periodic, and the frequency of the amplitude modulation may be swept. During the sweep, a time-of-flight sensor may take measurements of light returning from the scene. A computer may calculate, for each pixel in the sensor, a vector of complex numbers. Each complex number in the vector may encode phase and amplitude of light incident at the pixel and may correspond to measurements taken at a given frequency in the sweep. A computer may, based on phase of the complex numbers for a pixel, calculate fluorescence lifetime and scene depth of a scene point that corresponds to the pixel.