MULTICHANNEL OPTICAL MONITORING SYSTEM

摘要

A multichannel optical monitoring system for monitoring the spectral transmission of a plurality of samples. A plurality of light beams (16) are generated and a plurality of optical monitoring stations are arranged along a pathway, each station having an optical path formed by one of the light beams transverse to the pathway and along which optical characteristics are monitored. A drive mechanism moves a plurality of reaction wells (7), each containing a reaction volume, along the pathway from station to station so that respective reaction vo- lumes dwell periodically in each optical path for transmitting a respec- tive one on the light beams, a diffraction grating (19) is arranged for dif- fracting the beams transmitted by respective ones of the reaction vo- lumes. The diffracted beams are focussed and at least one array of the photodetectors (23) is positioned for receiving the diffracted and fo- cussed beams for producing electrical signals representing the spectral content of the diffracted beams. An electronic circuit detects the electri- cal signals of the array, which signals may be stored for further process- ing and evaluation.