SPECTRAL IMAGING SYSTEM

摘要

An imaging system is disclosed comprising an illuminator (1) which produces illumination of any desired pure wavelength or of an selected mixture of pure wavelengths simultaneously, which illuminates a sample without spatio-spectral artifacts using illumination optics designed for that purpose; imaging optics (11a-11j), which form an image of the sample at a detector or viewing port; and a detector. This enables imaging the complete spectral image cube for a sample by taking sequential images while illuminating with a series of pure wavelengths, with greater ease and economy than by means of tunable filters (12a-12j), interferometers and the like. It further enables imaging while the sample is illuminated with a precisely controlled mixture of illuminant wavelengths, so that the image presented to the detector is a linear superposition of the sample properties at many wavelengths.