1. A method for improved background correction for spatially and spectrally resolved detection, comprising: illuminating a target region with an excitation beam, wherein a divergence angle of the excitation beam is less than a field-of-view angle of a receiver optical system comprising a detector array; collecting on a first set of pixels of the detector array a target region signal generated in part by light produced by an interaction of the excitation beam with a target, wherein the first set of pixels of the detector array is determined by the divergence angle of the excitation beam; collecting at the same time on a second set of pixels of the detector array a background signal generated substantially by background light; and correcting the target region signal using the background signal to obtain a background-corrected target signal, wherein the first set and the second set comprise sections of a column of pixels of the detector array corresponding to a same wavelength.