Vol.2 No.4 2010

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Research paper : Development of a real-time all-in-focus microscope (K. Ohba)−243−Synthesiology - English edition Vol.2 No.4 (2010) Figure 18 is an external appearance of the microscope system implemented on the microscope using Prototype 2 as a base. Figure 19 shows examples of ordinary optical microscope images, and Fig. 20 is an image obtained with the microscope system.Here, glass fibers of 2 m diameter that are crossing each other three dimensionally are used as measured objects. Figure 19 shows the image every 10 m. It can be seen that the first glass fiber is in focus at 30-40 m while the second glass fiber is in focus at 60 m.By using the proposed all-in-focus microscope camera, an all-in-focus microscope image, shown in Fig. 20, was obtained. Since this image is a movie, the all-in-focus image is sequentially updated even if the measured objects move. The depth image is also obtained.7 Product phaseThe system developed here was realized as a product by Photron in fiscal year 2003. The external appearance of this system is shown in Fig. 21. The basic configuration does not differ from the prototype, but measures are taken for practical use such as the incorporation of color images and keeping the size of the system as small as possible.The examples of all-in-focus images obtained with this system are shown in Fig. 22, in comparison with ordinary images. Figure 22 top shows the wire bonding of an IC chip, and Fig. 22 bottom shows the diatom and microbes by transmitted light. For both images, the objective lens was of ×50 magnification. In actual performance, up to about ×100 objective lens can be operated, with the limiting factor being the weight of the objective lens. The stereomicroscope is used for low-power magnification from about 1 mm to 0.1 mm, and the electron microscope is widely used for high-power submicron observation. Due to the optical limit of the optical microscope, high-power is not needed in the biological field or for semiconductor inspection. Therefore, it was confirmed that the above magnification was sufficient for practical use.8 Future issuesThe all-in-focus microscope camera solves the issue of shallow depth of field that is a problem in ordinary microscope images, as well as the issue of not being able to obtain depth information. It is a system whose objective is to produce and display images where all areas are in focus and to conduct 3D compositions of objects in real time. By allowing all-in-focus images and 3D compositions at the same time, an object can be observed in detail. However, by specializing in extracting only the image in focus and the depth data from one direction only among the multiple images of varying focal distances obtained by ordinary microscope, much information had to be cut off. For example, when the focal distance is moved in a vertical direction for a Fig. 20 Example of all-in-focus microscope image (moving image).Fig. 21 External appearance of product system.All-in-focus imageOrdinary imageAll-in-focus imageOrdinary imageIC chip inspectionMicrobe observationFig. 22 Example of image output of product.

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