SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CONTROLLED INTENSITY ILLUMINATION IN A BIOANALYSIS OR OTHER SYSTEM

摘要

A system and method for metered dosage illumination in a bioanalysis or other system. In accordance with an embodiment, an illumination system or subsystem is described that can provide optimized amounts of excitation light within the short exposure times necessary to measure fast biological activity. The amount of light can be precisely measured to provide quantitative results. The light flux can also be precisely controlled to generate only a prescribed minimum amount of light, in order to reduce adverse lighting effects on both fluors and samples. Although the examples herein illustrate the providing of metered dosage illumination in the context of a bioanalysis system, the techniques can be similarly used to provide metered dosage illumination in the context of other types of system. In accordance with various embodiments, the technique is particularly useful in any quality-control, analysis, or assessment-based environment. Typical research and development applications can include quality control, instrument calibration, and light output standardization; while clinical and diagnostics applications can include clinical monitoring, bioassay calibration and control for diagnostics, treatment and or therapeutic evaluation.

主权项

1. A system for providing metered dosage illumination for use in a bioanalysis or other system, comprising:
a light engine that can provide a plurality of different colors of light as a light output; a light detector that can detect an indication of light flux at the light output; a light-to-frequency converter that can convert the indication of light flux as detected by the light detector to a pulse train, the frequency of which pulse train is proportional to the light flux; a counter that can compare an ongoing count as indicated by the pulse train, to a preset reference count for a particular color; and wherein, during operation, the illumination subsystem
determines a reference count for each color,for each exposure period, enables the light engine to turn on a particular color,monitors the indication of light flux at the light output, as detected by the light detector and converted to the pulse train counted by the counter, andwhen the counter reaches the reference count, disables the particular color currently provided by the light engine, to select a different color.