We present a digital architecture for fast acquisition of time
correlated single photon counting (TCSPC) events from
a 32 × 32 complementary metal oxide semiconductor
(CMOS) single photon avalanche detector (SPAD) array
(Megaframe) to the computer memory. Custom firmware
was written to transmit event codes from 1024-TCSPCenabled
pixels for fast transfer of TCSPC events. Our
1024-channel TCSPC system is capable of acquiring up
to 0.5 × 109 TCSPC events per second with 16 histogram
bins spanning a 14 ns width. Other options include 320 ×
106 TCSPC events per second with 256 histogram bins
spanning either a 14 or 56 ns time window. We present a
wide-field fluorescence microscopy setup demonstrating
fast fluorescence lifetime data acquisition. To the best of
our knowledge, this is the fastest direct TCSPC transfer
from a single photon counting device to the computer to
date.