Event-based cameras fire when individual pixels detect brightness changes, achieving microsecond temporal resolution — but they can't distinguish colors. Diffractive spectral imagers encode wavelength information through spatial dispersion — but they operate at conventional frame rates. Each sensor has what the other lacks.
This paper fuses both into a single fluorescence microscope. Asynchronous event streams provide the temporal backbone while diffraction-encoded CMOS measurements provide spectral information. The computational merger synchronizes the two data streams and achieves spectrally resolved tracking at 100,000 frames per second — without scanning, without filter switching, with 23 nm spectral discrimination.
The 100 μs effective temporal resolution reaches into the microsecond regime of behavioral dynamics in microscopy. The 23 nm spectral separation means fluorophores with nearly overlapping emission spectra can be distinguished in real time. Neither sensor alone could do this: the event camera doesn't see color, the spectral imager doesn't see fast enough. The fusion creates a capability that neither component contains. Decoupling temporal and spectral sampling — measuring fast in one modality and accurate in another — produces better combined performance than trying to do both in one sensor.