Patent ID: 7233391

Claim:
Apparatus for performing measurements on samples, said apparatus comprising a fixture; a support removably received in the fixture, said support having side walls and a bottom wall defining a multiplicity of sample-receiving wells arranged in columns and rows in a standard micro-plate format, said bottom wall also defining parallel truncated prisms each prism underlying an entire column or row of wells, each prism having a longitudinal axis, an exterior entrance surface and an exterior exit surface, said entrance and exit surfaces descending from an interior sensing surface located at the bottoms of the associated column or row of wells; a linear array of light sources extending parallel to the prism axes for directing interrogating light rays into a selected one of said prisms through the entrance surface thereof so as to simultaneously interrogate any samples in a plurality of wells of the associated column or row of wells, said interrogating rays being reflected at the corresponding sensing surface and leaving the selected prism from the exit surface thereof as measuring rays; a linear array of optical detectors extending parallel to the prism axes and paired with the array of light sources for simultaneously collecting said measuring rays and producing corresponding output signals indicative of refractive characteristics of any samples in said plurality of wells; a positioning mechanism for moving the fixture and the paired source/detector arrays relatively, and a controller for controlling the positioning mechanism so that any samples in said plurality of wells can be measured simultaneously.