INCIDENT LIGHT REDISTRIBUTION TO COMPENSATE FOR RADIAL GRADIENT IN DETECTOR

Nonuniformities in the efficiency of detection of individual fluorescing reaction mixtures in a well plate with a two-dimensional array well array are corrected. The nonuniformities arise both from the stimulation pattern and the detection pattern, and are corrected by adding additional segments to a pair of segmented mirrors. The additional segments are oriented to direct light to the outermost reaches (i.e., the four corners) of the array and thereby produce a stimulation pattern that has a greater intensity in the outermost regions. This compensates for a radial decline in the efficiency of the detector in detecting the emissions from the well plate, the radial decline being an artifact of systems that utilize CCDs or similar components as detectors.