The present invention relates to a new fluorescence detection platform based on the integration of grating-assisted surface plasmon coupled emission (GASPCE). This innovation builds upon the traditional SPCE technique by adding a grating to the metal surface which thereby provides additional emission confinement. The original conical emission pattern associated with the traditional SPCE technique is “squeezed” into a “two-beam” emission pattern that is more readily interrogated and collected by a waveguiding structure. With the GASPCE method and system of the present invention, a fluorescence emission can be coupled into optical waveguide with greater efficiency. As such, the integration of the GASPCE and existing optical fiber networking offers distributed real-time sensing capabilities. Also, the integration with an integrated optical chip may enable multi-channel array sensing or high-throughput florescence sensing.