Instrument for detecting and measuring fluorescence

摘要

An instrument comprises a reaction region holding assembly (48) including wells for holding a plurality of spaced-apart reaction regions (40) and a light emitting source (10) adapted to direct excitation beams (15) toward the plurality of reaction regions and to simultaneously illuminate two or more of the spaced-apart reaction regions. The light emitting source includes an array of light emitting diode sources that are arranged in groups, wherein different groups of predetermined numbers of light emitting diode sources are configured to emit different excitation frequencies. The instrument further includes a collimating lens system (20) disposed along the path of excitation beams between the light emitting source and the plurality of reaction regions wherein the collimating lens system is capable of collimating the excitation beams emitted from the light emitting source into two or more spaced-apart bundles of collimated excitation beams (25) and wherein the instrument is capable of directing each of two or more bundles of collimated excitation beams toward a respective reaction region of the plurality of reaction regions.