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Presence of reactive oxygen species (ROS) in excess of normal physiological level results in oxidative stress. This can lead to a range of pathological conditions including inflammation, diabetes mellitus, cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative disease. Biomarkers of oxidative stress play an important role in understanding the pathogenesis and treatment of these diseases. A number of fluorescent biomarkers exist. However, a non-invasive and label-free identification technique would be advantageous for in vivo measurements. In this work we establish a spectroscopic method to identify oxidative stress in cells and tissues by fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM). We identified an autofluorescent, endogenous species with a characteristic fluorescent lifetime distribution as a probe for oxidative stress. To corroborate our hypothesis that these species are products of lipid oxidation by ROS, we correlate the …