| 摘要 |
<p>The apparatus and method of the present invention disclose a scanning optical system, including a laser (10) for generating an excitation beam of coherent light (80) and a lens (19) to direct the excitation beam of light (80) on a columnar region of a sample container (20), wherein a fluid sample is reacted with a fluorescently-labeled binding agent. The reacted sample undergoes minimal processing before it is placed into sample container (20). The sample is optically scanned, emitted fluorescence is collected by the lens (19) and directed as retrobeam (83) to a mirror (22) and through a collimating lens (23), and fluorescence excitation is recorded by a detector (31) from a plurality of columnar regions of the container (20), each columnar regino generally defined by the spot size (33) of the excitation beam (80) and the depth of field of detection. A spatial filter (24) of a sufficient pinhole diameter is selected to limit depth of field to allow simultaneous volumetric detection of fluorescent targets (45) in each columnar region.</p> |
