FLUORESCENCE PATTERN-RECOGNITION FOR ULTRASENSITIVE MOLECULE-IDENTIFICATION - COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENTAL-DATA AND THEORETICAL APPROXIMATIONS

A concept taken from information theory is applied to ultrasensitive f luorescence detection and identification of molecules. The theoretical misidentification probability is compared to the experimental error p robability. It is found that 350 photons are sufficient to distinguish dye molecules with nearly identical absorption and emission propertie s but with Is different fluorescence lifetimes with an accuracy of 1 m isidentification in 10(4) experiments. Thus we demonstrate the experim ental usefulness of the Kullback-Leibler minimum discrimination inform ation for the identification of molecules.