Patent ID: 8064053

Claim:
A 3-color multiplex CARS spectrometer, comprising: a broadband laser light source 10 generating a pump beam for multiply exciting molecular vibrations of media constituting a sample; a narrowband Stokes laser light source 20 generating a Stokes beam for allowing the multiply excited molecular vibration to resonate while interacting with a separate pump beam whose wavelength band is arbitrarily set and is different from the pump beam; a probe laser light source 30 generating a probe beam for generating a multiplex CARS spectrum signal from the resonance-excited molecular vibration of the sample, wherein the probe laser light source 30 uses a short-wavelength laser beam having a shorter wavelength than that of the pump beam so that a 3-color multiplex CARS spectral signal generated using the pump, Stokes and probe beams is separated from a distorted 2-color multiplex CARS spectral components generated using only the combination of the pump and Stokes beams; a beam combiner 40 temporally synchronizing optical pulse outputs of the pump, Stokes and probe beams, and spatially overlapping the pump, Stokes and probe beams on the same axis; a microscope objective 50 focusing the synchronized and spatially overlapped laser beam onto a point in the sample; a sample displacement scanner 60 arbitrarily adjusting the position of a focus of the laser beam in the sample focused by the microscope objective 50 ; a condensing optical system 70 condensing and collimating a CARS signal generated at the focus of the sample; a dichroic mirror 80 or notch filter removing the incident laser and noise wavelength components contained in the condensed CARS signal; a monochromator 90 spatially dispersing wavelength components of the pure CARS signal from which the incident laser and noise wavelength components are removed; a 1D/2D photodetector array 100 detecting a multiplex CARS spectral signal wavelength-dispersed by the monochromator 90 ; and a data analyzer 110 transferring the wavelength-dispersed multiplex CARS spectral signal detected by the 1D/2D photodetector array 100 to a computer and performing data analysis.