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Presentation
What’s up with EM-CCDs II? EM-CCDs and Fluorescence microscopy. To answer the question of the hour What do microscopists really want? Sensitivity!! ...but what kind? presented by Jim Pawley, jbpawley@wisc.edu 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 1 /55 This kind? or this kind? 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 2 /55 What everyone needs to know about photodetectors • Some of the electrons in the sensitive volume of the photodetector are capable of absorbing one photon and using its energy to produce an excited (photo)electron. e- • e• e• e• e• sensitive volume of detector • So measuring light intensity comes down to simply measuring these photoelectrons. The problem is that you can’t quite do this... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 3 /55 Two problems: Problem 1. Only a fraction of photons produce photoelectrons. (This fraction is called the Quantum Efficiency or QE) QE varies w/wavelength Signal lost to low QE must be “replaced” by making more signal: i.e., more excitation 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 4 /55 Problem 2. The few-electron signal is very weak and must be amplified. All amplifiers add “read” noise to the signal. e• e• e• e• e• sensitive volume of detector electronic noise FET amplifier amplified signal + electronic noise 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 5 /55 Everyone wants it but no one knows what it is. What is “sensitivity” anyway? It must be a mixture of QE and read noise... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 6 /55 Let’s settle for: • High-QE, • Low Noise, • Fast readout! Surely, the EMCCD has provided all this... What do microscopists really want NOW? 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 7 /55 Menu... Old problems • Interline transfer would solve Moiré problems. • Software: compatibility! Build in deconvolution/filtering. • How much cooling for @ 106 FPS read out? • Know/control the EM gain, store data as electrons. • Need a way to measure CCD performance. New applications • Applications for linear EM-CCDs • “Proportional color” CCDs? • Can an EM-CCD replace the PMT in the LSCM? But first, a bit of microscopy... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 8 /55 9 OBEY THE RI RULES! Use a water lens! OBEY NYQUIST >4 PIXELS/BLOB! 7µm pixels better than 16µm pixels. OB TH 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 Of course, “proper SA correction” will not solve all your optical problems: Cells are still lumpy and will scatter and distort the nice laser beam so it doesn’t go where it should. nucleus Backscattered light image of a cheek cell. 488 nm. Nuclear “Shadow” distorts image of smooth glass surface. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 10 /55 This leaves diffraction and statistics... The problem of live-cell microscopy: • How to get a good, 3D image of a living cell without killing it. • More photons make better images but also cause more damage. In confocal fluorescence imaging, “too few photons” is usually a more severe limit on resolution than diffraction! 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 11 This is really true... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 12 /55 13 Signal is lost at every stage. Signal is lost at every stage . detector Input: 1015 photons/mW or ~109 phot./pixel/mW (assume 512x512 in 1 sec) Detected output: 107 photons/mW or ~100 phot./pixel/mW (assume 512x512 in 1 sec) The Specimen interacts with the incoming light in some way that produces contrast (i.e., some pixels brighter than others): commonly epi-fluorescence. Though it depends on specimen stain level, the in-focus fluorescence signal is commonly ~10 6 times less intense than the excitation. Because of geometrical and reflection losses, and the low effective QE of the PMT, only about 1% of in-focus, signal photons are detected. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 The weak-signal problem: • The rate at which signal is produced is always proportional to the intensity of the input light. • Although the input light level can be made almost arbitrarily high, the fluorescent dye response saturates at about 1 mW in a halfmicrometer spot. • Even 1 mW causes considerable damage. Much lower excitations are preferable. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 14 /55 15 All methods of 3D microscopy are not equal... High power density not good for dyes or cells. Damage/excitation: 2-photon > 1-beam confocal > disk/line confocal > widefield (?) Need 2D detector Peak power x Widefield Illuminates entire field (1 million points!) at one time 5 10 x Confocal Illuminates only one point at a time (Ok, really about 12 points) 10 10 x 2-photon Illuminates about 12 points, and it is turned off 99.999% of the time) 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 Disk-scanners are fast and spread the light load. Single-beam Confocal Multi-beam Confocal PMT CCD Using many beams, each one can have less photon/sec, without decreasing the data rate. BUT, until recently, they lacked a photodetector that operated as well as a PMT in the 0-10 photon range. 16 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 ENTER: The EMCCD! When φ1 goes to ground, the high positive voltage on φ2 pulls the charge packet past the “DC” electrode, through the high-field region, where charge amplification may* occur *Only ~1% of single-PEs multiply to become 2. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 17 /55 First, the bad news: Multiplicative noise in the EM amplifier doubles “Poisson Noise”: effectively halving QE. FOM EM-CCDs, March 2005 18 19 Then, the good news: Intrinsic QE is pretty high!! 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 What does EM-CCD offer? • Unique ability to produce useable images with signals in the 0 - 50 photon range. • Rapid (10 - 35 MHz) readout with no increase in read noise. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 20 /55 21 We understand EM-CCDs Simulated/actual results for early E2V EM-CCD camera: 0.8 and 10.4 electrons/pixel. They have no read noise but the multiplicative noise effectively cuts the measured QE in half. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 And it works pretty well! Ixon 512x512, EM-CCD Intensified-CCD “Normal” dye loading, No wave propagation. Wave propagates! 7x less dye, EM-CCD Images kindly provided by Mark Hollywood, Queens University, Belfast 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 22/55 Because the EM-CCD measures zero so well, it can detect 4 grey levels at the bottom of the signal range that are lost in noise with a conventional CCD. and it does this @35MHz! output, photons/pixel Fortunately, this is just where the disk-scanning confocal microscope operates! However, nothing is perfect! input, photons/pixel If the lowest signal is >50 photons and speed isn’t important, then the conventional, cooled, slow-scan CCD wins because its effective QE is 2x higher. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 23 /55 Perkin Elmer/Yokogawa disk-scanning confocal: Micro-lenses and lasers provide enough light for fluorescence. 20,000 micro-lenses cover surface of upper disk, concentrates laser excitation into pinholes fiber from laser: 2λ • Each lens of the micro-lens array is located so as to focus the light striking it onto a specific pinhole in the lower disk. collimating lens axis of double disk CCD camera • The lenses and pinholes are laid out in a constant-pitch helical pattern such that every part of the illuminated area is scanned equally about 360x per second. • The micro-lens pattern repeats 12 times/turn. Twelve hundred 50µm pinholes cover 3%of the disk surface. disk spacing = fmicro-lens = 1 cm 1:1phototransfer lens doubledichroic beamsplitter cube laser illuminates 7 x 10 mm area in intermediate plane • As the disk rotates, the CCD accumulates data from an entire optical section. Overall performance depends strongly on that of the CCD camera. objective pinhole pattern on disk Pinhole disk located in intermediate image plane. Band of pinholes in lower disk, 50µm diam. on 250 µm centers, focus plane 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 24 /55 So what is the problem? Son of Moiré lives! Frame transfer effects: Get the orientation right! EMCCD Rotation A better solution would be an interline transfer EM-CCD, with microlenses!! 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 25 /55 Old problems • Interline transfer would solve Moiré problems • Software, software software compatibility! • How much cooling for @ 106 FPS read out? • Know/control the EM gain, store data as electrons. • Need a way to measure CCD performance. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 But to make this clever camera work on an diskscanning confocal, ? it needs to talk to the software! Integrating the camera drivers into the microscope software has been slow. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 27/55 Microscopy is degenerate! • The accuracy of the measurement of the number photons recorded in each of these 64 voxels is limited by √n or Poisson Noise. • The resulting √n S/N ratio will be greatly improved if a way can be found to average all these photons together. Deconvolution is the way! 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 28/55 These results generously provided by Erik Manders Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam What else should software do? Deconvolve everything! Projected, raw, 3D confocal data Same data, deconvolved. The cells moving from late anaphase to interphase. DNA stained with GFP makes cells extremely sensitive for oxidative stress since 1) the GFP is very close to the DNA and 2) the cells have to pass the very sensitive checkpoints around mitosis. Standard Zeiss LSM510, 488 Argon,10 mW output, AOTF @ 0.2 %, 488 beamsplitter and 505 LP emission filter. Power measured at specimen, 150nW. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 29/55 Cooling is good! Dark “noise” and temp: -30 0C -50 0C ...so, cool it! -80 0C 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 7 /55 30 Lowest temperatures = lowest noise Lowest temperatures need UH vacuum. Permanent Hermetic seal Vacuum Window (anti-reflection coated) TE Cooler CCD • Less heat conduction. • Window stays warmer: no condensation. • Only one glass window needed. But higher cost and complexity. Do you need it at 1,000,000 FPS? 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 31 /55 Old problems • Interline transfer would solve Moiré problems • Software, software software compatibility! • How much cooling for @ 106 FPS read out? • Know/control the EM gain, store data as electrons. • Need a way to measure CCD performance. 32 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 The EM gain is nice to get the signal away from the noise BUT it makes it very hard to know how big your signal is. sense sense read read digitize memory digitize memory Or the level of statistical noise. What we need is a system to... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 33/55 monitor its gain on-the-fly, and divide the digitized number by the appropriate factor to make the number stored, equal (approx.) to the number of electrons in the original packet. Display LUTs can be used to make the image visible on the screen. These LUTs might be linear or SqRt. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 34/55 So we have a neat photodetector. How reliable is it? We need a method of measuring photodetector performance that is: • Foolproof • Reproducible • Intuitive • Informative I have a suggestion... 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 36 Measuring the Intensity Spread Function (ISF) of a CCD 2. Extract the values for a particular pixel from each image. 1. Obtain ~100 CCD images, identical but for noise. . 3. Plot histogram from set of intensities obtained from these pixels (This plot shows data from ~ 600images). What could be simpler? # trials 100 4. For no-light, halfwidth at half max. is approx. equal to RMS noise, when expressed in electrons. 50 0 0 8 16 photons detected = ne 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 37 OTHER VARIABLES Stray light that varies during data collection will skew the ISF results (as it will also skew “real” results). Protect the camera from stray light by working in a dark room and placing shields to prevent stray light entering via the objective or the oculars. Light source instability over time will produce “fixed-pattern” noise that will confuse ISF calculations. Ensure that the transmission source is powered by a regulated DC source. Stray signal from fluorescent room lights can be a particular problem on inverrted scopes. Turn them off!! The software can be programmed to warn of, and even partially correct for, “fixed-pattern” noise in the time domain. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 What does EM-CCD offer? • Unique ability to produce useable images with signals in the 0 - 50 photon range. • Rapid (10 - 50 MHz) readout with no increase in read noise, with no increase in read noise, with no increase in read noise! 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 38 /55 New applications • Applications for linear EM-CCDs • “Proportional color” CCDs? • Can an EM-CCD replace the PMT in the LSCM? 39 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 EMCCD sensors so far….. E2V – ‘L3’ CCD65 – 576x288, 20x30µ pixels FI only TI – ‘Impactron’ Now: CCD87 – 512x512, 16x16µ pixels FI and BI TC285 – 1Kx1K, 8x8µ pixels FI only - virtual phase CCD60 – 128x128, 24x24µ pixels FI and BI Here soon: 128x32, 10x10µm pixels, 35MHz 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 40 /55 41 Proposed Gain-register Linear CCDiode • The 270µm x 15 mm sensitive area would be divided into 9 x 512 pixels, with the linear signal light centered on row 3 (center). • At the end of each 52 µs line scan period, charge is rapidly transferred from the sensor to the read register. • This signal is then read out @ 70 nm via the Horizontal and Gain registers to the Read amplifier and the Digitizer. Read amp 512 pixel, 4-phase gain register 3-phase horizontal register Storage register Sense register Array length, 512, 30 µm pixels or about 15 mm 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 42 To mimic the effect of changing the slit width, the digitized signal is then “decoded” into 3 data streams, representing signal from the center, the adjoining and the outside rows of the sensor. Signal decoder: small slit signal - separates signals from pixels representing different “slit widths.” medium slit signal clock 512 pixel, 4-phase gain register Read amp large slit signal Digitizer 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 The new Zeiss “Live-5,” linescanner almost cries out for a 512 x 1 linear EM-CCD! Actually, 2 of them!! 1 2 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 43/55 TX309 32 pixels 128 pixels Frame transfer Virtual Phase QE ~ 65% max 10 µm2 pixels 35 MHz pixel readout (possible extension to 50 or 60 MHz) 0.16 µs/row parallel transfer 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 44/55 TX309 (Texas Instruments) Dark Events ~ 1 electron every 70 pixels. –70 C Exposure 10ms EM Gain ~ x1000 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 45/55 ent mes 46 ety s, Spectral detectors Fluorescent light comes in a variety of colors, reflection losses? prism pinhole collimating lens PMT 4 PMT 3 and these colors carry useful information PMT 1 Leica SP spectral detector system: Truly ornate detector PMT 2 getting away from interference filters, method 1. systems have been designed to make this • When pinhole is small, collimation is excellent and spectral accuracy superb. possible! • When pinhole is larger, or specimen thick/heavily stained, collimation is less good and spectral accuracy decreases. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 47 Linear photodetector arrays are already in use. diffraction grating pinhole collimating lens higher order diffraction losses? • The signal from each PMT can be stored individually or added to that from others. • Up to 8 separate grouped or individual signals can be stored. • Spectral precision slightly reduced by large pinhole size or thick stain. Zeiss META spectral detector: getting away from interference filters, method 2. 32 PMT array could be replaced by a 32x128 EMCCD, binned 32x4 photocathodes glass envelope “dead zone” en-face view of PMT array but, as binning wastes time, 1x32 is preferred. 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 48 Is there an easier way? If the eye can discriminate a million colors with only 3 sensors, Green channel why not try it in fluorescence microscopy! All you need is the filter arrangement used in 3-chip color CCDs. Blue channel Red channel Channel 1 Channel 2 Channel 3 Signal wavelength is coded as proportional signals in 3 (or more) channels 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 49 Dichroic 1 Dichroic 2 Light from microscope laser-line filter, to remove stray reflected light. Proportional color coding Detector 2 Detector 1 to digitizer 100% transmission Dichroic 1 Wavelength of light Dichroic 2 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 New applications • Applications for linear EM-CCDs • “Proportional color” CCDs? • Can an EM-CCD replace the PMT in the LSCM? 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 50/55 51 3 things PMT specs don’t say Effective QEQE 1. Not all PEs are amplified equally. Poisson statistics affects the gain of the multiplication process, as it applies to each PE. Even a very high first dynode gain of 25x, will produce a muliplicative noise of about 20%*. 1/1.4 to less = 0.71 than 70% 2. Lost signal PMT QE curves describe the fraction of photons striking the photocathode that produce photoelectrons (PE), About 30% of these either miss dynode 1, or they produce no SE. 0.7 3. Optimistic “statistics”: The published curves tend to describe the very best tubes produced. Actual QE of tube in your scope, probably ~30% lower. 0.7 The Bottom Line: QE = (0.7 x 0.7 x 0.7)QE = ~34% of the quoted QE ! (effective) (published) 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 52 200 µm Proposed Gain-register CCDiode • The 200 x 200 µm sensitive area would be divided into 25 pixels, with the signal light centered on the center. • At the end of each 2 µs pixel period, charge is transferred from the sensor to the read register. • This signal is then transferred via the Horizontal and 5x5 Gain registers to the read- out amplifier. sensor • The digitized signal is then “decoded” into 3 data register streams, each representing one of the concentric areas of the sensor. small pinhole signal medium pinhole signal read register large pinhole signal signal decoder: - separates signals from the different “rings” digitizer read amplifier horizontal register gain register, 512 to 768 stages gain = 1kx to 2kx 2nd International EMCCD Symposium /55 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 53 /55 What if we made a Dedicated Electronic Pinhole EMCCD… Theoretical frame rate calculation of a dedicated 5x5 interline EMCCD sensor….. @ 50 MHz pixel readout ~ 1 µs to shift under interline mask 0.16 µs/row parallel shift ~ 400,000 frames/sec 5 pixels ~ 2.5 µs/frame 5 pixels 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 54/55 Step LED brightness (6.86%) 1x1 ROI LED on ~1,500 x 20µs exposures from one pixel over ~ one second Step LED brightness (0.27%) When the signal level drops below one photon/measurement, the Poisson Noise is pretty high. LED on 1x1 ROI LED on 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 55/55 39.5% 6x6 pixels, binned 29.3% 22.2% 17.6% 14.1% 11.7% Step LED brightness (97-90) 39.5% 9.9% 8.2% 6x6 ROI 29.3% Step LED brightness (97-90) 6x6 ROI Step LED brightness (39.5 to 8.2%) 1x1 ROI 22.2% 17.6% 14.1% 11.7% 9.9% 8.2% Single pixel signal 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 56/55 Comparison to CCD97 LED 1.9% (E2V) 1x1 pixel ROI 1000 1100 Expanded 1050 1000 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 57/55 TX309 for rapid spectral imaging 1 ms exposure time – ROI plot from one spectral peak Switch source on and off during 10,000 frame kinetic series Very weak signal, but still easy distinction from instrument detection limit 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 58/55 Acknowledgements Andor Technology Queen’s University Belfast Colin Coates Donal Denvir Mark Hollywood University of Vienna Markus Aspelmeyer US Genomics Sandia National Labs Mike Sinclair Ray Meyer 2nd International EMCCD Symposium 59/55