Sdtfile is a Python library to read SDT files produced by Becker & Hickl SPCM software. SDT files 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:
- License:
BSD-3-Clause
- Version:
2026.7.17
- DOI:
Quickstart
Install the sdtfile package and all dependencies from the Python Package Index:
python -m pip install -U sdtfile[all]
See Examples for using the programming interface.
Source code and support are available on GitHub.
Requirements
This revision was tested with the following requirements and dependencies (other versions may work):
CPython 3.12.10, 3.13.14, 3.14.6, 3.15.0b3 64-bit
Numpy 2.5.1
Imagecodecs 2026.6.26 (optional for LZ4 compressed data blocks)
Lz4 4.4.5 (optional alternative to imagecodecs for LZ4 compressed data blocks)
Revisions
2026.7.17
Fix decompression of LZ4-compressed data blocks.
Add fallback to lz4 module if imagecodecs is not installed.
2026.7.12
Fix BlockNo attribute names (breaking).
Try power-of-two padded image shapes when block/adc_re > image_y * image_x.
Support LZ4 compressed and larger than 4 GB data blocks (not tested).
Update MeasureInfoExt structure with MeasStopInfoExt and MWL fields.
Use BinaryFile for file I/O.
Add simple CLI to preview data and metadata in SDT files.
2026.6.29
Fix reading SDT files with truncated embedded ZIP files (#8).
2026.6.6
Fix potential file handle leak in SdtFile init.
Add options for memory-mapping and locked reading to BinaryFile.
Add option to memory-map SDT files.
Drop support for Python 3.11 and numpy 2.0 (SPEC0).
Support Python 3.15.
2026.2.8
Derive SdtFile from BinaryFile (breaking).
Rename MEASURE_INFO.MeasHISTInfo to HISTInfo to match C struct (breaking).
Revise shaping of FCS_BLOCK data (breaking).
Fix code review issues.
2026.1.14
Improve code quality.
2025.12.12
Add new SPC modules and MEASURE_INFO_EXT fields.
Drop support for Python 3.10.
2025.5.10
…
Refer to the CHANGES file for older revisions.
References
W Becker. The bh TCSPC Handbook. 9th Edition. Becker & Hickl GmbH 2021. pp 879.
SPC_data_file_structure.h header file. Part of the Becker & Hickl SPCM software installation.
Examples
Read image and metadata from an “SPC Setup & Data File”:
>>> sdt = SdtFile('image.sdt')
>>> int(sdt.header.revision)
588
>>> sdt.info.id[1:-1]
'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,)
>>> sdt.close()
Read data and metadata from an “SPC Setup & Data File” with multiple data sets:
>>> sdt = SdtFile('fluorescein.sdt')
>>> len(sdt.data)
4
>>> sdt.data[3].shape
(1, 1024)
>>> sdt.times[3].shape
(1024,)
>>> int(sdt.setup.bh_bin_hdr['soft_rev'])
850
>>> sdt.close()
Read image data from an “SPC FCS Data File” as numpy array:
>>> sdt = SdtFile('fcs.sdt')
>>> sdt.info.id[1:-1]
'SPC FCS Data File'
>>> len(sdt.data)
1
>>> sdt.data[0].shape
(512, 512, 256)
>>> sdt.times[0].shape
(256,)
>>> sdt.close()
View the image and metadata in an SDT file from the console:
$ python -m sdtfile image.sdt
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