Special dark chamber for spectrum analysis of ultraweak light emission by organisms

Summary form only given. The emission of ultra weak light by living beings has been studied by several researchers throughout the world. The study of these emissions in biological samples is very important, due to its applications in the environmental, agronomical and biomedical areas. The objective here is to develop and implement a dark chamber with multiple tubes and a system able to make acquisition of spontaneous and stimulated ultra weak bioluminescence and to handle the photon counting in an environment with controlled temperature.This set of electrical, electronic and mechanical components has as its main part four modules that consist of low noise photomultiplier valves (PMT). Three of those modules are able to work with varying wavelengths. The counting is controlled and performed via computer by four Counting Units (Hamamatsu C8855 Counting Unit) and other circuits associated to a control software built in LabVIEW. The samples of interest are accommodated in Petri dishes of different sizes that are placed at the PMT focal point inside the dark chamber. By detecting simultaneously emissions on three bands, it is possible to verify the spectrum alterations, which can be applied in toxicological tests firstly.