Fig 3. Distribution of mean lifetime τ₂ in lower half layers (□-layer 1, ◯-layer 2, △-layer 3, ▽-layer 4, ◇-layer 5) and top half layers (6–10) of epithelium as tissues progress from normal to various CIN grades.

Here, the mean τ₂ for each pathological state was calculated from the sample pool which includes 10 normal, 8 CIN1, 6 CIN2 and 8 CIN3 cervical tissue sections and the averaged relative standard deviation (RSD) was calculated to be 20% for all categories. More details regarding error bars are clarified in S4 Fig.