Patent ID: 7426026

Claim:
A method of measuring concentrations of first to mth (where m is an integer of 2 or more) fluorescent dyes contained in a target sample, using an imaging device having first to kth (where k is an integer of 2 or more) different detection wavelength bands, portions of the detection wavelength bands overlapping any adjacent bands, comprising: preparing first to mth reference samples each containing only one of the first to mth fluorescent dyes respectively at predetermined unit concentrations, and acquiring a measured intensity of fluorescence emitted from each reference sample in each detection wavelength band; taking a fluorescence image of the target sample in each detection wavelength band using the imaging device; and executing an operation represented by a formula below, to calculate concentrations c 1 -c m of the first to mth fluorescent dyes at a site in the target sample, [ Formula ⁢ ⁢ 24 ] ⁢ [ c 1 c 2 ⋮ c m ] = ( J T · J ) - 1 · J T · [ O 1 O 2 ⋮ O k ] , ⁢ J = [ J 11 J 12 ⋯ J 1 ⁢ m J 21 J 22 ⋯ J 2 ⁢ m ⋮ ⋮ ⋮ J k ⁢ ⁢ 1 J k ⁢ ⁢ 2 ⋯ J km ] where O 1 -O k represent values of pixels in the fluorescence images of the target sample taken in the first to kth detection wavelength bands, the pixels corresponding to the site, J is a k×m matrix, and a component J ij in the ith row and jth column (where i is any integer from 1 to k, and j is any integer from 1 to m) in J is the measured intensity in the ith detection wavelength band of the fluorescence emitted from the jth reference sample.