A miniaturized optical biosensor for low-level fluorescence emitted by DNA strands labelled with CY5 is showed. Aim of this work is to demonstrate that a Si-based photodetector, having a low noise and a high sensitivity, can replace traditional detection systems in DNA-microarray applications. The photodetector used is a photomultiplier (SiPM), with 25 pixels. It exhibits a higher sensitivity than commercial optical readers and we experimentally found a detection limit for spotted dried samples of ∼1 nM. We measured the fluorescence signal in different operating conditions (angle of analysis, fluorophores concentrations, solution volumes and support). Once fixed the angle of analysis, for samples spotted on Al-TEOS slide dried, the system is proportional to the concentration of the analyte in the sample and is linear in the range 1 nM–1 μM. For solutions, the range of linearity ranges from 100 fM to 10 nM. The system …