Patent ID: 8355126

Claim:
An analyzer for analyzing composition of a portion of a sample, comprising: a hand-held, self-contained, test instrument having a housing that includes: an exciter for exciting the portion of the sample, the excitation producing an optical signal from an analytical gap; a first dispersive element disposed within the hand-held instrument for receiving the optical signal and creating an intermediate optical signal dispersed in a first plane; a second dispersive element disposed within the hand-held instrument for dispersing the intermediate optical signal in a second plane so as to place a first resolved optical order on a corresponding first plurality of detector elements and a second resolved optical order on a corresponding second plurality of detector elements; a processor coupled to receive signals from the first and second pluralities of detector elements and programmed to process the signals; a battery powering the exciter and the processor; and a baffle defining an aperture, through which the intermediate optical signal passes, the baffle masking off the edges of a volume in the analytical gap.