tb_tcspc_coates_correct — 2D typed op

Data kinds: countscounts

Call: fullseye.apply(img, "tb_tcspc_coates_correct", a=0.5, b=0.5) (the 2-D model is one image plus two scalar knobs a,b∈[0,1])

Usage

Undo TCSPC pile-up exactly (Coates's estimator) — the early-photon bias.

Classical TCSPC records at most one photon per excitation cycle: the

first one. Late bins are therefore starved, because the cycles in which an

early photon arrived never reach them, and the measured histogram is biased

toward short arrival times — a dToF depth read straight off a piled-up

histogram is *too close*, and a fluorescence lifetime is *too short*.

Coates's estimator inverts that exactly. With `N_k` the measured counts in

bin `k and C` the number of excitation cycles, the number of cycles that

survived to reach bin `k is D_k = C - sum_{j<k} N_j`, the per-cycle

detection probability in that bin is `p_k = N_k / D_k` and the pile-up-free

per-cycle intensity is `lambda_k = -ln(1 - p_k)`. This op returns

`C * lambda_k` — the histogram the same scene would have produced if the

detector could record every photon — so it is directly comparable to the

measured one.

This is an exact inverse, not a linearisation: build a histogram from a

known `lambda through the forward model `N_k = C * exp(-sum_{j<k}

lambda_j) * (1 - exp(-lambda_k))` and Coates returns lambda` to machine

precision (measured max relative error 1.6e-15 in the tests, on a pile-up so

severe that the last bin was suppressed to 14.8% of its true counts).

*hist* is the 1-D measured histogram (counts per bin); *cycles* the number of

excitation cycles (laser pulses) that produced it.

Raises `ValueError`: negative, non-finite or non-1-D *hist*, a

non-positive or non-integer *cycles*, a histogram whose total exceeds

*cycles* (impossible: at most one photon per cycle — a sure sign that

*cycles* is wrong or the data are not first-photon TCSPC), and any bin that

consumed every remaining cycle (`p_k = 1, where -ln(0) is inf`).

Typed bridge of the photon op `tcspc_coates_correct into the 2-D evolution registry: the same implementation, called under the op(v, a, b) convention. This op has no tunable parameter; a and b` are unused.

References (sample data, literature)

• Sample-data catalog (download URLs / licences) — 2-D uses skimage.data (BSD/public domain) plus synthetic images; 3-D lists download URLs for real data sources (Stanford, PDS, …).

• Operator provenance and references — the sources of the research/methods this op family came from.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

• (none yet)

Ops the type connects to (they accept counts as input)

identity · tb_spad_deadtime_apply · tb_spad_deadtime_correct · tb_tcspc_irf_convolve · tb_tcspc_background_subtract · tb_dtof_depth · tb_countrate_to_counts · tb_counts_to_countrate

Same category (typed)

tb_points_to_voxel · tb_estimate_point_normals · tb_iss_keypoints · tb_angle_3points · tb_project_points · tb_render_point_depth · tb_statistical_outlier_removal · tb_radius_outlier_removal


*Provenance: ops.py — 2D operator registry. This per-op note is generated by tools/opdocs.py md (do not hand-edit).*

© 2026 Kazufumi Furuse — Fullseye operator documentation. Licensed under Apache-2.0.