Patent ID: 7327443

Claim:
A monitoring system for a density centrifuge blood processing system for separating fluid components and having a separation chamber rotating about a central rotation axis, comprising: a first light source in optical communication with said density centrifuge blood processing system for providing an incident light beam for illuminating an observation region on said density centrifuge blood processing system, thereby generating light transmitted, scattered or both from said observation region, said light source comprising a plurality of reflective surfaces spaced around a central illumination axis, and a plurality of light emitting diodes, at least one light emitting diode being spaced away from said central illumination axis radially outward from at least one of said reflective surfaces such that light from said diode is reflected from said surface generally along said central axis; and a light collection element in optical communication with said density centrifuge blood processing system for collecting at least a portion of said light transmitted, scattered or both from said observation region.