A high-sensitivity 3-D shape measurement method with microscope

An optical microscope commonly has the magnification from tens times to thousands times, and is often used for the observation of a micro specimen. The three-dimensional (3-D) form measurement of the specimen surface is broadly demanded of fields, such as medical treatment, pharmacy, life science, and materials science. On the conventional methods, the focus distance is regulated with great precision or the system is complex and the operation and observation is simply by the skilled personnel. In order to solve these problems, we propose a high-sensitivity 3-D shape measurement method with microscope. The measurement system is consisted of a normal microscope, a line laser, and a computer can obtain the high precision of target. The method is unnecessary to regulate the focus distance with great precision, simply project the laser source onto the surface of target and obtain the reflection image with the camera of microscope, and by using the image processing to obtain the center point of waveform of the intensity distribution of reflection image, finally calculate the 3-D shape information based on the triangulation method. The experimental results show the proposal method is available.