sdtfile 2018.8.29

Read Becker & Hickl SDT files

SDT files are produced by Becker & Hickl SPCM software. They contain time correlated single photon counting instrumentation parameters and measurement data. Currently only the “Setup & Data”, “DLL Data”, and “FCS Data” formats are supported.

Becker & Hickl GmbH is a manufacturer of equipment for photon counting.

Author:

Christoph Gohlke

Organization:

Laboratory for Fluorescence Dynamics. University of California, Irvine

Version:

2018.8.29

Requirements

• CPython 2.7 or 3.5+

• Numpy 1.13

Revisions

2018.8.29

Move module into sdtfile package.

2018.2.7

Bug fixes.

2016.3.30

Support revision 15 files and compression.

2015.1.29

Read SPC DLL data files.

2014.9.5

Fixed reading multiple MEASURE_INFO records.

Notes

The API is not stable yet and might change between revisions.

Python 2.7 and 3.4 are deprecated.

References

1. W Becker. The bh TCSPC Handbook. Third Edition. Becker & Hickl GmbH 2008. pp 401.

2. SPC_data_file_structure.h header file. Part of the Becker & Hickl SPCM software.

Examples

Read image and metadata from a SPC Setup & Data File:

>>> sdt = SdtFile('image.sdt')
>>> sdt.header.revision
588
>>> sdt.info.id[1:-1]
b'SPC Setup & Data File'
>>> int(sdt.measure_info[0].scan_x)
128
>>> len(sdt.data)
1
>>> sdt.data[0].shape
(128, 128, 256)
>>> sdt.times[0].shape
(256,)

Read data and metadata from a SPC Setup & Data File with mutliple data sets:

>>> sdt = SdtFile('fluorescein.sdt')
>>> len(sdt.data)
4
>>> sdt.data[3].shape
(1, 1024)
>>> sdt.times[3].shape
(1024,)

Read data from a SPC FCS Data File as numpy array:

>>> sdt = SdtFile('fcs.sdt')
>>> sdt.info.id[1:-1]
b'SPC FCS Data File'
>>> len(sdt.data)
1
>>> sdt.data[0].shape
(512, 512, 256)
>>> sdt.times[0].shape
(256,)