Patent ID: 8682596

Claim:
In connection with an object having native material and potentially having foreign material, a method for detecting one or both of said native material and said foreign material by parallel-mode spectroscopy, comprising: a) parallel-mode data acquisition comprising: i) producing an interrogating signal containing electromagnetic radiation; ii) exposing said object and any associated foreign material to said interrogating signal so as to cause interaction between said signal and said object and any associated foreign material; and iii) detecting a modified signal resulting from the interaction of said interrogating signal with the object and any associated foreign material; iv) said interrogating signal simultaneously containing electromagnetic radiation of sufficient bandwidth in the range of approximately 10 GHz to approximately 25 THz to allow simultaneous detection of the modified signal at a plurality of frequencies, the modified signal having respective amplitudes at different frequencies, which collectively provide a unique spectral signature of a material whose detection is desired; b) signal processing and data reduction, comprising: i) processing said modified signal to feed data points resulting from said a data matrix storage array representative of at least any foreign or native material associated with the object, wherein each point in the two-dimensional data matrix storage array contains a respective representation of an amplitude of the modified signal at a given sampled frequency; ii) providing a reference library of data representing known chemical or biological materials of interest; iii) following said processing said modified signal and said providing a reference library of data, using correlation technique to compare said data matrix to said reference library; and c) providing the results of the foregoing comparison by indicating a likelihood of presence of foreign material or native material if an associated correlation peak from said correlation technique reaches or exceeds a threshold level, and by indicating a likelihood of absence of foreign or native material if an associated correlation peak from said correlation technique does not reach said threshold level.