A high performance hyperspectral imager with high light throughput suitable for microscopy and analytical imaging was built and tested. The imager utilizes phenomenon of optical activity. The new technique provides a continuous spectral range of several hundreds of nanometers starting in deep UV. Similar spectral range starting in the near IR is also achievable.

A performance of a low cost implementation of the new technology is presented. The imager has a form of a microscope adaptor, which is inserted between the microscope and a low-cost 8-bit CCD camera. The resulting instrument is simple, robust, and highly compact. The imager module is placed in-line to the microscope imaging system and does not introduce observable image aberrations. Advantageously, the imager is transparent to conventional imaging operations, thus with the imager in-place there is no need for reconfiguration of the microscope to switch between conventional and hyperspectral video/digital imaging modes.

The presented spectral imager answers the need for a practical, sensitive, compact, and affordable imaging spectrometer. The instrument is well suited for a broad range of applications requiring rapid parallel acquisition of highly resolved concurrent spatial and spectral information such as high throughput screening, biochip analysis, remote sensing or nondestructive semiconductor testing.