V.V. Shapovalov, B.S. Gurevich, I.A. Kolesov, V.N. Chelak, S.V. Andreyev, A.V. Belyaev

The problem of spatial and spectral kinds of information selection from the total recorded object pattern is among the most important problems in image processing. Along with that such characteristics as processing rate and information losses (subject to be minimized) are of great importance. The common spectral imaging devices which operate with the turret of interference filters, allow to select separate spectral components of the images with high selectivity, however, the rate of image processing occurs to be limited by the presence of mechanically moving parts/ Moreover, the number of spectral components is defined by number of interference filters in the turret and does not exceed 2..3 dozens. The cost of the device is high which is defined by the filter prices. The alternative device is the acousto-optic imaging spectrophotometer designed on the dasis of acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF). Multispectral and hyperspectral image processing by means of AOTF are known, as well as spectral image processing on the basis of the set of AOTFs. The high-speed spectral image processing on the basis of the newly developed acousto-optic imaging spectrophotometer is considered in the presented paper. The novel universal polychromic light source which is able to illuminate the object by the light with controlled spectral composition, and developed specially for high speed biochemical analyses performance, represents a significant component of the mentioned spectrophotometer. Different peculiarities of this device are considered in the paper, including special software which provides the images spectral processing with high speed an with minimum losses of spectral information. The results of the device primary experimental application are also listed. The perspectives of the future device application for medical diagnostics are discussed.