Pile-up free microscopy imaging with a single-pixel camera

Time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) allows to achieve picosecond-precision measurements for low-light signals. However, TCSPC suffers from pile-up distortion, constraining the acquisition rate to 1-5% of the laser rate. To overcome the issue, our research focuses on high-rate TCSPC methodologies: in 2017 we reported a hardware acquisition approach, that has been translated into a real system, guaranteeing low distortion at 32 Mcps. This talk provides an overview on the research project, and in particular on the two validation campaigns carried out in fluorescence and lidar measurements, and on our first on-field experiment, i.e. the application of the technique to a single-pixel camera.