Determination of particle number and brightness using a laser scanning confocal microscope operating in the analog mode

We describe a method to obtain the brightness and number of molecules at each pixel of an image stack obtained with a laser scanning microscope. The method is based on intensity fluctuations due to the diffusion of molecules in a pixel. For a detector operating in the analog mode, the variance must be proportional to the intensity. Once this constant has been calibrated, we use the ratio between the variance and the intensity to derive the particle brightness. Then, from the ratio of the intensity to the brightness we obtain the average number of particles in the pixel. We show that the method works with molecules in solution and that the results are comparable to those obtained with fluctu…