Patent ID: 8391961

Claim:
A method for analyzing spectrally resolved information about light coming from different spatial locations of a biological sample in response to an illumination of the sample, wherein the light includes contributions from different components in the sample, said method comprising using one or more electronic processors to perform the following: deriving an estimate of a pure spectrum for at least a first one of the components in the sample from at least part of the spectrally resolved information corresponding to a first set of one or more of the different spatial locations and a spectral estimate of a pure spectrum for a second one of the components, wherein each pure spectrum estimate corresponds to the spectrally resolved information that would result if only the component corresponding to that estimate contributes to the light and wherein each pure spectrum estimate comprises a plurality of values corresponding to different spectral weighting functions; decomposing at least some of the spectrally resolved information for each of at least some of the different spatial locations into a contribution from the spectral estimate of the pure spectrum for at least a selected one of the components in the sample; and constructing an image of the sample based on the decomposition to preferentially show the selected one of the components.