Methods and devices for optically determining a characteristic of a substance

摘要

Optical computing devices are disclosed. One exemplary optical computing device includes an electromagnetic radiation source configured to optically interact with a sample and at least two integrated computational elements. The at least two integrated computational elements are configured to produce optically interacted light and further configured to be associated with a characteristic of the sample. The optical computing device further includes a first detector arranged to receive the optically interacted light from the at least two integrated computational elements and thereby generate a first signal corresponding to the characteristic of the sample.

主权项

1. A method of determining a characteristic of a sample, comprising:
optically interacting an electromagnetic radiation source with the sample to form input light for at least two integrated computational elements, wherein a first one of the at least two integrated computational elements comprises a first plurality of layers of material and a second one of the at least two integrated computational elements comprises a second plurality of layers of material different from the first plurality of layers of material, the first and second pluralities of layers of material being disposed according to the characteristic of the sample; producing optically interacted light from the at least two integrated computational elements, wherein the first and second plurality of layers of material are selected so that an intensity of the optically interacted light is proportional to a dot product between an input light spectrum vector and a regression vector associated with the characteristic of the sample; receiving with at least one detector the optically interacted light from the at least two integrated computational elements, thereby generating a first signal and a second signal; and computationally combining the first and second signals to determine the characteristic of the sample.