Patent ID: 7420673

Claim:
A method for generating a design pattern for a spatial radiation modulator to encode two or more selected spectral components in one or more spectral ranges for the chemometric analysis of a group of analytes, said modulator employed in an optical system comprising at least one radiation source and dispersive optics to produce at least one dispersed image along at least one radial axis of said modulator substantially according to a dispersion function, said dispersion function relating radial positions on said modulator to dispersed spectral components in the at least one dispersed image; said method comprising: obtaining a corresponding spectrum for each of said analytes in said group, each said spectrum having at least one spectral feature in at least one of said spectral ranges; defining a set of at least two initial spectral windows, each said spectral window comprising a center wavelength and a bandwidth, each of said initial spectral windows falling within at least one of said spectral ranges, said spectral windows corresponding to said selected spectral components; constructing a chemometric matrix to relate concentrations of said analytes in said group to intensities of said spectral components; deriving from said chemometric matrix optimized spectral windows; and translating said center wavelength and said bandwidth of each of said optimized spectral windows into a corresponding optimized annular region on said modulator, said annular region comprising a corresponding optimized radial position and optimized radial width.