Patent ID: 7824883

Claim:
A method for the detection and enumeration of microbes comprising: a. exciting multiple intrinsic microbial fluorophores having a specific range of electromagnetic radiation wavelength above 200 nm with frequency-modulated electromagnetic radiation; whereby any microbes present containing intrinsic fluorophores are excited to emit fluorescence, some of whose fluorescence is self-absorbed to excite other microbial fluorophores that in turn emit fluorescence and whereby said microbe containing intrinsic fluorophores is excited to emit fluorescence at that frequency, and; b. detecting the fluorescence signal resulting from the frequency-modulated excitation, and c. separating the resulting contribution to the measured signal at each excitation frequency due to microbial intrinsic fluorescence with a method capable of calculating the intensity of each frequency-modulated signal, and; d. determining that the ratios of the total detected fluorescence signals associated with each excitation frequency lie within expected physiological ranges, thereby determining the number of microbes by the magnitude of the integrated fluorescence signal associated with an excitation frequency where the total detected fluorescence signals associated with each excitation frequency lies within an expected physiological range.