Optical interrogation device

1. An interrogation device for detecting luminescent light produced by analytes in a sample excited by multiple excitation light beams each having individual spectral contents, comprising:

a plurality of light sources each generating one of said multiple excitation light beams, the excitation light beams being projected on a common excitation site on the sample to excite the analytes;

at least one detector for detecting the luminescent light produced by the sample; and

an optical assembly having:

common sample-side optics projecting the excitation light beams towards said sample and collecting luminescent light from said sample;

a main axis from said common sample-side optics to said at least one detector, said plurality of light sources being peripherally distributed about said main axis;

distinct and fixed excitation light paths for each of the excitation light beams from said peripherally distributed light sources to said common excitation site on said sample;

a shared luminescence light path for the luminescent light propagating rearward from the common excitation site on sample to the at least one detector;

an inwardly-redirecting assembly provided in said excitation light paths for inwardly redirecting said excitation light beams into said common sample-side optics close to said main axis and toward the common excitation site; and

wherein said excitation light paths and said shared luminescence light path are on a same side of said sample and said common sample-side optics is present in all of said excitation light paths and in said shared luminescence light path, and wherein said inwardly-redirecting assembly comprises an outer reflective element and an inner reflective element cooperating to receive the excitation light beams and redirect said excitation light beams toward said common sample-side optics.

2. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said optical assembly further comprises a filter provided in said shared luminescence light path, wherein said filter is one of a fixed filter and an actuated filter and wherein said filter is one of a single-band-pass filter and a multi-band-pass filter.

3. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the optical assembly is contained in a single housing.

4. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the optical assembly includes a component to shape at least one of a spatial and a spectral profile of at least one of said excitation light beam and said luminescent light.

5. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 4 , wherein said component is a spatial filter limiting a size of a given light beam along a corresponding light path.

6. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 5 , wherein said optical assembly includes a spectral filter and wherein said spectral filter has a spectral profile excluding the spectral contents of the excitation beam and is disposed in the shared luminescence light path.

7. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein the optical assembly includes detector-side optics outputting the filtered luminescent light for detection.

8. The interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said optical assembly comprises waveguides to guide said excitation light beams towards said sample-side optics.

9. The optical interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 , wherein said luminescent light produced from analytes in said sample results from at least one optical phenomena, said optical phenomena being one of fluorescence, phosphorescence, bioluminescence, time-resolved luminescence and polarization fluorescence.

10. A test apparatus for optically testing a sample, including:

an optical interrogation device as claimed in claim 1 .

11. The test apparatus as claimed in claim 10 , wherein said test apparatus is embodied by a system for performing one of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR), real-time Polymerase Chain Reaction (rtPCR), isothermal amplification Recombination Polymerase Amplification (RPA) and other nucleic acid detection methods.