Patent ID: 7310149

Claim:
A measurement apparatus comprising: a source of electromagnetic radiation; a first optical system capable of substantially collimating electromagnetic radiation; an optical delivery system capable of providing electromagnetic radiation from said source to said first optical system; a sample holding assembly capable of holding a sample and placing the sample in an optical path of the substantially collimated electromagnetic radiation; a second optical system capable of receiving electromagnetic radiation transmitted through the sample and at least a portion of said sample holding assembly; a detecting system capable of detecting electromagnetic radiation; an optical transmission system capable of receiving electromagnetic radiation from said second optical system and transmitting the received electromagnetic radiation to said detecting system; said second optical system being also capable of transmitting electromagnetic radiation to said optical transmission system; said detecting system being optically disposed to receive electromagnetic radiation from said optical transmission system; a data collector interface component operatively connected to said detecting system and capable of receiving data from said detecting system; at least one processor; and at least one computer readable medium having computer readable code embodied therein, said computer readable code being capable of causing said at least one processor to: receive data from said detecting system corresponding to a measurement, calculate characteristics from the received data, organize the calculated characteristics in a predetermined ordering of independent variables and corresponding dependent variables, wherein the apparatus is designed to perform a specific measurement and the predefined ordering is dictated by the specific measurement being performed, and output the organized predetermined ordering to said at least one computer readable medium; said at least one processor, said at least one computer readable medium, and said data collector interface component operatively connected to each other.