1389-2010/09 $55.00+.00 © 2009 Bentham Science Publishers Ltd. Single-Quantum Dot Imaging with a Photon Counting Camera

Abstract: The expanding spectrum of applications of single-molecule fluorescence imaging ranges from fundamental in vitro studies of biomolecular activity to tracking of receptors in live cells. The success of these assays has relied on pro-gress in organic and non-organic fluorescent probe developments as well as improvements in the sensitivity of light detec-tors. We describe a new type of detector developed with the specific goal of ultra-sensitive single-molecule imaging. It is a wide-field, photon-counting detector providing high temporal and high spatial resolution information for each incoming photon. It can be used as a standard low-light level camera, but also allows access to a lot more information, such as fluo-rescence lifetime and spatio-temporal correlations. We illustrate the single-molecule imaging performance of our current prototype using quantum dots and discuss on-going and future developments of this detector