PROCESSING OF GLASS CYLINDER DIFFRACTION PATTERNS SCANNED WITH A PHOTODIODE ARRAY - INFLUENCE OF THE OPTICAL TRANSFER-FUNCTION OF DIODES ON DIMENSIONAL MEASUREMENTS

Far-field diffraction patterns of a glass cylinder are spatially sampled with a photodiode array. Three photometric signal processing methods are discussed. The first one is based on the analysis of fringes in the central lobe. It can be used for diameter monitoring, but not for a wide range of diameter measurements. The second method consists of best-fitting between the theoretical model of the irradiance distribution in the central fringe and the corresponding experimental data. The accuracy of this method (-/+ 1-mu-m, in the range 10 to 50-mu-m) is improved by introducing the optical transfer function (OTF) of the photosensitive area into the calculation. The third method uses a reliable estimation of the intensity at the center and the half-width of the central fringe in order to resolve the inverse problem by Newton's method. This method can be used for real-time measurements but must be improved by statistical approaches.