Abstract: A method is provided for extracting the position of a particle, e.g., a moving or stationary particle that is excited or is emitting light. The method includes, among other steps, detecting and recording a signal based on, for example, the movement of the particle, a correlation step to eliminate noise and to create a transformed signal, a matching or fitting step to match the transformed signal to a fit function and an extracting or determining step to determine the position of the particle from the fit function. In one form, at least two particle positions are detected so that the distance between the subject particles can be determined.

Abstract: A method and system for using spatially modulated excitation/emission and relative movement between a particle (cell, molecule, aerosol, . . . ) and an excitation/emission pattern are provided. In at least one form, an interference pattern of the excitation light with submicron periodicity perpendicular to the particle flow is used. As the particle moves along the pattern, emission is modulated according to the speed of the particle and the periodicity of the stripe pattern. A single detector, which records the emission over a couple of stripes, can be used. The signal is recorded with a fast detector read-out in order to capture the “blinking” of the particles while they are moving through the excitation pattern. This concept enables light detection with high signal-to-noise ratio and high spatial resolution without the need of expensive and bulky optics.

Abstract: An improved method of analyzing target analytes in a sample is described. The method is based on creating an approximately homogeneous distribution of light in an anti-resonant guided optical waveguide to improve light-target interaction in a target-containing medium. The light-target interaction can be monitored by many different means to determine characteristics of the target analyte.