Patent ID: 8811704

Claim:
A method, comprising: (a) obtaining multiple images of pixels representing light intensity output from a chemiluminescent assay, wherein the light intensity output indicates a presence and an amount of a substance within wells of a test plate, and wherein the multiple images of pixels are generated by using a detector to detect the light intensity of the pixels of the wells using: a standard exposure time; and a longer-than-standard exposure time; and (b) generating a composite image using the multiple images of pixels, including: determining an exposure compensation ratio based on the standard exposure time and the longer-than-standard exposure time; determining a presence of out-of-range pixels in the image that used the longer-than-standard exposure time, wherein the out-of-range pixels have light intensities that exceed a threshold based on a maximum capacity of the detector; placing out-of-range pixels in the composite image at a same relative position as the out-of-range pixels occurred in the image that used the longer-than-standard exposure time, wherein the light intensities of the out-of-range pixels are based on the light intensities from the image that used the standard exposure time and the exposure compensation ratio; determining a presence of in-range pixels in the image that used a longer-than-standard exposure time, wherein the in-range pixels have light intensities that are below the threshold; and placing in-range pixels in the composite image at a same relative position as said in-range pixels occurred in the image that used the longer-than-standard exposure time, wherein the light intensities of said in-range pixels are based on the light intensities from the image that used the longer-than-standard exposure time adjusted for light intensity decay due to a passage of time between the image that used the standard exposure time and the image that used the longer-than-standard exposure time.