Microscopic Three-Dimensional Measurement Based on Telecentric Stereo and Speckle Projection Methods

A High-Accuracy Calibration Method for a Telecentric Structured Light System

We propose a method for accurately calibrating a telecentric structured light system consisting of a camera attached to a bilateral telecentric lens and a pin-hole projector. The proposed method can be split into two parts: axial calibration and transverse calibration. The first part is used for building the relationship between phase and depth by means of a planar plate with ring markers on its surface at several different positions in the measuring volume. The second part is used for establishing the relationship between transverse coordinates and pixel positions with the depth offered by a translation stage and the extracted ring centers. Compared with existing methods that require projector calibration, the proposed method can avoid a propagation of the correspondence error between the camera imaging plane and projector imaging plane, thus increasing calibration accuracy. The calibrated telecentric structured light system is further used for three-dimensional (3D) reconstructions of a planar, a ruled surface, and complex surfaces. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed system calibration method can be used for accurate 3D measurement.

Surface Reconstruction of Microscale Objects Based on Grid-Patterned Structured-Light Measurements

A structured-light projection system was designed for microscale objects with surface heights that ranged from tens to hundreds of microns. The system was composed of a universal projector and microscope system that supported editing the attributes of structured-light patterns in real-time and was capable of projecting microscale patterns. On this basis, reconstructing the metal surfaces of microscale objects based on grid patterns of structured light was investigated, the internal and external parameters of microscope vision and projection systems were calibrated, and an image algorithm for grid-node detection was designed. The results indicated that the proposed method successfully reconstructed the three-dimensional (3D) surface of microscale objects, and the reconstruction results were consistent with the original surfaces. With 95% confidence, the reconstruction precision in the X- and Y-directions was approximately ±4.0 μm and in the Z-direction was approximately ±7.5 μm. The designed system and the proposed method were suitable for 3D-shape measurement of microstructures in microscopic fields and can be adapted to meet a broader range of applications, as compared to current methods.

Design of thin-structured-light projection system for small-height measurement

A thin-structured light projection system with simple setup is proposed and applied to small-height measurement. In this system, the design of structured light pattern is carried out on the computer. The structure, color, geometric dimension, motion mode, projection brightness, contrast, and other attributes of the pattern can be edited easily. The optical system with zoom function is designed, which can output thin-structured-light fringe with a minimum width of 10 μm. The camera and microscope are used to construct a vision system, which is used to capture the pattern of structured light. The three-dimensional (3D) shape reconstruction is realized by analyzing the pattern of structured light. The results show that this system can project a small width of thin-structured light pattern, which is very suitable for 3D shape reconstruction of microscopic objects with the small-height of tens of microns to hundreds of microns.

3D surface reconstruction of small height object based on thin structured light scanning

Aiming at the problem of 3D surface reconstruction of small height objects, a method based on the scanning principle with thin structured light is proposed. The laser fringe is produced by a laser light source. It scans the surface of small height object under the control of a precise motion control system, and is integrated with a stereo light microscope and two cameras to form a complete structured light profilometry system. This method is very suitable for 3D surface reconstruction of small height objects. In order to deal with the phenomenon of "cracking" and local uneven brightness in microscope fringe image, the fringe image sequence is captured under different camera exposure parameters, and the quality of fringe image is improved by image fusion. The location of pixels on the center line of laser stripes is detected by the Loess local second-order fitting method, and the positions of these pixels are smoothed and predicted by using the Lowess local linear fitting method. The deformation of the laser stripe center curve is calculated by constructing a baseline, and the 3D surface reconstruction of the object with small height is realized in the image space. Taking the small characters on the surface of Chinese coins and human hair as test samples, their 3D surfaces are constructed by using the method proposed in this paper. The reconstructed 3D surface shapes are highly consistent with the real 3D surface shapes of objects.

Swept-Source-Based Chromatic Confocal Microscopy

Chromatic confocal microscopy (CCM) has been intensively developed because it can exhibit effective focal position scanning based on the axial chromatic aberration of broadband light reflected from a target. To improve the imaging speed of three-dimensional (3D) surface profiling, we have proposed the novel concept of swept-source-based CCM (SS-CCM) and investigated the usefulness of the corresponding imaging system. Compared to conventional CCM based on a broadband light source and a spectrometer, a swept-source in the proposed SS-CCM generates light with a narrower linewidth for higher intensity, and a single photodetector employed in the system exhibits a fast and sensitive response by immediately obtaining spectrally encoded depth from a chromatic dispersive lens array. Results of the experiments conducted to test the proposed SS-CCM system indicate that the system exhibits an axial chromatic focal distance range of approximately 360 μm for the 770-820 nm swept wavelength range. Moreover, high-speed surface profiling images of a cover glass and coin were successfully obtained with a short measurement time of 5 ms at a single position.