Patent ID: 8922858

Claim:
A method for scanning a light beam spot spatially over one or more biosensors supported by a microplate with an optical scanner system having: at least one adjustable optic to deflect the light beam spot to an x and y position on the microplate; a set of properties that describe the x and y position on the microplate of the beam spot at any time; a series of points in time and at each point in time a value for each of the properties and the 1 st through the (n−1) th order rates of change of each of the properties; the method comprising: defining an axis for each property used to describe the state of the beam spot; calculating for each axis an n th order piecewise polynomial function of time between each point in the series of points in time that equals the specified axis value and the 1 st through the (n−1) th order rates of change where the piecewise polynomial function of time is substantially continuous throughout in axis value and the 1 st through the (n−1) th order rates of change; producing a series of elapsed times between each point in the series of points in time; calculating each axis value from the polynomial function at each point in the series of elapsed times; calculating the x and y locations of the scan path from the axis values at each point in time; and sending the calculated x and y locations to the optical scanner system when each point in elapsed time series occurs to cause the optical scanner system to deflect the light beam and scan the beam spot over the defined scan path.