A self-adaptive and nonmechanical motion autofocusing system for optical microscopes

Continuous optical zoom telescopic system based on liquid lenses

Telescopes play an essential important role in the fields of astronomical observation, emergency rescue, etc. The traditional telescopes achieve zoom function through the mechanical movement of the solid lenses, usually requiring refocusing after magnification adjustment. Therefore, the traditional telescopes lack adaptability, port-ability and real-time capability. In this paper, a continuous optical zoom telescopic system based on liquid lenses is proposed. The main components of the system consist of an objective lens, an eyepiece, and a zoom group composed of six pieces of liquid lenses. By adjusting the external voltages on the liquid lenses, the zoom telescopic system can achieve continuous optical zoom from ∼1.0× to ∼4.0× operating with an angular resolution from 28.648" to 19.098", and the magnification switching time is ∼50ms. The optical structure of the zoom telescopic system with excellent performance is given, and its feasibility is demonstrated by simulations and experiments. The proposed system with fast response, portability and high adaptability is expected to be applied to astronomical observation, emergency rescue and so on.

A Method for Medical Microscopic Images' Sharpness Evaluation Based on NSST and Variance by Combining Time and Frequency Domains

An algorithm for a sharpness evaluation of microscopic images based on non-subsampled shearlet wave transform (NSST) and variance is proposed in the present study for the purpose of improving the noise immunity and accuracy of a microscope's image autofocus. First, images are decomposed with the NSST algorithm; then, the decomposed sub-band images are subjected to variance to obtain the energy of the sub-band coefficients; and finally, the evaluation value is obtained from the ratio of the energy of the high- and low-frequency sub-band coefficients. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm delivers better noise immunity performance than other methods reviewed by this study while maintaining high sensitivity.

Nonmechanical and multiview 3D measurement microscope for workpiece with large slope and complex geometry

Due to the large slope and complex geometry, it is difficult to measure the three-dimensional parameters of cutting tools and drill bits by using general optical measurement method. A method that combines the multiview rotation scanning and nonmechanical focus variation by using a liquid lens is proposed in this paper. Firstly, the workpiece is rotated by using a rotation unit, and in every rotation position, a sequence of images of the workpiece are captured in the axial direction. Secondly, the relative degree of focus is measured for all pixels by using focus measure operators to obtain the depth value corresponding to each pixel. Thirdly, a multiview registration algorithm is designed to combine all the individual data sets at each rotation position into a whole three-dimensional point cloud. Finally, the three-dimensional parameters of the rake angle and clearance angle of the gear, screw tap and drills are measured. The proposed method is lateral shift-free and no light intensity variation, so it can obtain better accuracy. The experimental results show that the accuracy of the axial measurement reaches 2.4 μm (2σ, Nikon 5×/0.1).

LAY DESCRIPTION

This article is about a method that combines the multi-view rotation scanning and non-mechanical focus variation by using a liquid lens.

Field of view scanning based quantitative interferometric microscopic cytometers for cellular imaging and analysis

Microimaging is of great significance in the biological and medical fields, since it can realize observations acting as important references for cellular research and disease diagnosis. However, traditional microscopy only offers qualitative sample contours; moreover, it is difficult to reach large-amount sample observations limited by the fixed field of view (FoV). To realize massive cellular measurements quantitatively, three designed quantitative interferometric microscopic cytometers based on the FoV scanning are introduced and compared in details in this article. These devices not only retrieve the quantitative sample phase distributions in the extended FoV, but also provide the detailed information of massive cells, such as cellular volume, area, and roundness. Considering their capabilities as quantitative imaging and large-amount sampling, it is believed that these quantitative interferometric microscopic cytometers (QIMCs) can be potentially adopted in high-throughput cell imaging and statistical analysis for both the biological and medical applications.