A Corrected Likelihood Approach for the Nonlinear Transformation Model with Application to Fluorescence Lifetime Measurements Using Exponential Mixtures

Tabea Rebafka (1) , François Roueff (1) , Antoine Souloumiac (2)

1 LTCI - Laboratoire Traitement et Communication de l'Information
2 LIST (CEA) - Laboratoire d'Intégration des Systèmes et des Technologies

A fast and efficient estimation method is proposed that compensates the so-called pile-up effect encountered in fluorescence lifetime measurements. The pile-up effect is due to the fact that only the shortest arrival time of a random number of emitted fluorescence photons can be detected. A likelihood-based estimator is developed for the more general nonlinear transformation model that can be computed by an EM-type algorithm. The new estimator is particularly well-suited for fluorescence lifetime measurements, where arrival times are often modeled by a mixture of exponential distributions. The consistency of the estimator is shown and its limit distribution is provided. The method is evaluated on real and synthetic data. Compared to currently used methods in fluorescence, the new estimator should allow a reduction of the acquisition time of an order of magnitude.

Domains: Statistics [math.ST]; Statistics Theory [stat.TH]

Tabea Rebafka, François Roueff, Antoine Souloumiac. A Corrected Likelihood Approach for the Nonlinear Transformation Model with Application to Fluorescence Lifetime Measurements Using Exponential Mixtures. The international journal of biostatistics, 2010, 6 (1). ⟨hal-00448724⟩