A corrected likelihood approach for the nonlinear transformation model with application to fluorescence lifetime measurements using exponential mixtures

A fast and efficient estimation method is proposed that compensates the distortion in nonlinear transformation models. A likelihood-based estimator is developed that can be computed by an EM-type algorithm. The consistency of the estimator is shown and its limit distribution is provided. The new estimator is particularly well suited for fluorescence lifetime measurements, where only the shortest arrival time of a random number of emitted fluorescence photons can be detected and where arrival times are often modeled by a mixture of exponential distributions. The method is evaluated on real and synthetic data. Compared to currently used methods in fluorescence, the new estimator should allow a reduction of the acquisition time of an order of magnitude.