All Reflective Apparatus for Injecting Excitation Light and Collecting In-elastically Scattered Light from a Sample
AssigneeC8 Medisensors Inc.
InventorsJan Lipson, Donald A. Ice
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An apparatus is disclosed wherein laser radiation illuminates a sample using all reflective optics and wherein in-elastically scattered light from the sample is collected using the identical elements. The apparatus obviates the problem of contaminating the laser radiation with unwanted spectra from transmissive optics while providing very high rejection of the laser radiation with respect to the in-elastically scattered light. In addition, the apparatus can collect and launch light with high numerical aperture and large field of view.
Claims12
An apparatus for launching optical radiation onto a sample and for collecting in-elastically scattered radiation from a sample comprising:
- a first off-axis reflector which focuses nominally collimated radiation onto a sample and collects scattered radiation from the sample;
- at least one filter, wherein a filter nearest the first off-axis reflector reflects radiation from an optical source such that it is intercepted by the first off-axis reflector, and wherein the filter nearest the first off-axis reflector transmits in-elastically scattered radiation reflected by the first off-axis reflector, the filter nearest the first off-axis reflector being disposed at an angle such that a beam from the optical source, prior to its incidence on the filter will not be substantially intercepted by the first off-axis reflector;
- and
- a means for focusing the radiation transmitted by the filter nearest the first off-axis reflector.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.