Single-molecule analysis<br />
Since minimal DNA sample required, time-consuming and costly amplification step is avoided to streamline sample preparation process.
Large DNA molecule templates (~500 kb) vs. Short DNA molecule templates (< 1kb)
While most next generation sequencing technologies aim of massive amounts of smalls sequence reads, these small sequence reads make de novo sequencing efforts and genome repeat regions difficult to comprehend.  Optical sequencing uses large DNA molecule templates (~500 kb) for sequencing and these offer several advantages over small templates:
#These large DNA templates can be "DNA barcoded" to determine their genomic localization with confidence. Therefore, any sequence reads that are taken from the large template can be mapped onto the genome with a high degree of confidence.  More importantly, sequence reads from high repeat regions can placed with a greater degree of confidence whereas the short reads suffer from mapping  uncertainty in high repeat regions.  Special algorithms and software such as optical mapping and nanocoding have been developed to align single-molecule barcodes with a reference genome.
#Multiple sequence reads from the same large template molecule. These multiple sequence reads reduce the complexity of de novo assembly, disambiguate genomic rearrangement regions, and "intrinsically free from any assembly errors."
#Molecular barcoding of large DNA molecular templates with sequence acquisition provides broad and specific genomic analyses