Applicability of an EM-CCD for spatially resolved TIR-ICS

Abstract

In this work we systematically explored performance of an EM-CCD as a detector for spatially resolved total internal reflection image correlation spectroscopy (TIR-ICS) with respect to adjustable parameters. We show that variations in the observation volume (pixel binning) can be well described by a simple structural term omega. To test the sensitivity of camera-based TIR-ICS we measured diffusion coefficients and particle numbers (PN) of fluorescent probes of different sizes (Fluorospheres, GFP and labeled antibodies) at varying viscosities, concentrations, and sampling rates. TIR-ICS allowed distinguishing between different probe concentrations with differences in PN of 5% and differences of 6% in D by acquiring only 15 independent measurement runs.