tcspc_irf_convolve — PHOTON tcspc op

Data kinds: countscounts

Call: import photoncount; photoncount.tcspc_irf_convolve(hist, bin_ps=100.0, irf_fwhm_ps=200.0, truncate=4.0) (or opsphoton.get("tcspc_irf_convolve"))

Usage

Blur an arrival-time histogram by the instrument response (timing jitter).

The temporal analogue of a PSF convolution: a detector's timing uncertainty

(SPAD jitter + TDC quantisation + laser pulse width) smears every arrival

time by the instrument response function, here a Gaussian of full width at

half maximum *irf_fwhm_ps*. The kernel is the exact bin integral of that

Gaussian (erf differences), normalised to sum 1, truncated at

`+-truncate*sigma` and forced to odd length so the convolution is centred.

Ground truth: convolving a unit spike in the middle of a 256-bin window with

`irf_fwhm_ps = 500 at bin_ps = 50` leaves the centroid exactly

where it was (measured shift 0.0 ps — the kernel is symmetric) and gives a

profile whose measured FWHM is 501.22 ps. That 0.24% excess over 500 is the

*measurement*, not the kernel: :func:tcspc_stats finds the half-maximum

crossings by linear interpolation between bins, which slightly overestimates

the width of a Gaussian.

Total counts are preserved *except* at the window edges, where

`mode='same'` discards the tail that falls outside — measured loss exactly

0 for that centred spike, but a genuine loss for a pulse within a few sigma

of either end.

Returns a float64 1-D histogram of the same length as *hist*.

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

non-positive *bin_ps* / *irf_fwhm_ps* / *truncate*, an IRF sigma below

1e-3 bins (the kernel would be a delta and the op a no-op — say so instead

of pretending to blur), and a kernel that would be longer than the

:data:MAX_BINS cap.

Detailed usage guide

photon_timeresolved family guide

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.

• The canonical algorithm (author, year) and its uses are named in the family usage guide above.

Runnable examples (verified samples that actually call this op)

photon_timeresolvedpy -3.11 examples/photon_timeresolved.py

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

tcspc_coates_correct · tcspc_background_subtract · tcspc_stats · dtof_depth · lifetime_fit · lifetime_phasor

Same category (tcspc)

tcspc_simulate · tcspc_background_subtract · tcspc_stats


*Provenance: photoncount.py — PHOTON 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.