Patent ID: 7023553

Claim:
An optical measurement instrument capable of identifying and selecting connected optical components, comprising: an illumination source for forming an excitation beam; a detector for detecting an emission beam; a repositionable optical component base for simultaneously hosting plural optical components from a group of interchangeable and removable optical components, each optical component comprising means configured for at least one of i) directing the excitation beam received from the illumination source into a sample, ii) directing an emission beam received from the sample to a detector, iii) filtering the excitation beam, and iv) filtering the emission beam, each optical component including an identification information marking serving to identify characteristics of the optical component; a reader for reading identification information from the identification information marking of each optical component; a storage device connected to the reader to store identification information read by the reader, and to store a location information of where each optical component is located on the repositionable optical component base at the time of reading the identification information of each optical component; a measurement mode unit with an input for receiving information on a measurement mode selected for a current optical measurement of the sample and with a storage for storing the selected measurement mode; and an evaluation and selection component connected to the storage to select one of the optical components from said group of optical components for the current optical measurement based on the stored identification information and the selected measurement mode, wherein, the evaluation and selection component causes the repositionable optical component base to reposition at least partly on the basis of said location information of a selected optical component in order to align the selected optical component with the illumination source and detector, and any of the hosted optical components may be, via repositioning of the base, aligned with the illumination source and detector.