• Analysis of multi-exponential decay data.
• Running in hundreds of laboratories on a wide variety of computers.

Methods:

• Fully automatic: no starting estimates needed for the number of exponentials or for their parameters;
• Modified Gauss-Newton least squares, with intensive searches from many starting points to find the global optimum;
• Methods in the references below are used to get starting estimates and to speed up the analysis:

References:

• S.W. Provencher: An eigenfunction expansion method for the analysis of exponential decay curves. J. Chem. Phys. 64, 2772 (1976).
• S.W. Provencher & R.H. Vogel: Information loss with transform methods in system identification: A new set of transforms with high information content. Math. Biosci. 50, 251 (1980).
• S.W. Provencher & R.H. Vogel: Regularization techniques for inverse problems in molecular biology in: Numerical Treatment of Inverse Problems in Differential and Integral Equations, eds. P. Deuflhard & E. Hairer (Birkhäuser, Boston, 1983), pp. 304-319.

Downloading:

1. README.txt (1.3KB): Short guide for the installation and test run; print this first;
2. discrete-manual1.pdf (1356 kB);
3. discrete-manual2.pdf (929 kB);
4. math-biosci.pdf (1410 kB) (useful, but not necessary reading);
5. discrete.for ( 34KB): (zipped with gzip) Fortran source code (not needed if you can use one of the two executables listed below);
6. discrete.in (540 B): Test data.