Computed speckle decorrelation (CSD) for the study of fatigue damage

A video-based laser speckle technique has been developed for noncontact analysis of fatigue in situ and at speeds approaching video frame rates. This technique, computed speckle decorrelation (CSD), makes use of the speckle decorrelation associated with surface deformation. It is a method of full field inspection which both locates fatigue damage sites and measures damage severity. In its current application, CSD has been used to study the fatigue deformation progression in reverse bending fatigue of a cylindrically notched aluminum specimen. However, film based studies have shown the usefulness of laser speckle decorrelation to analyze fatigue deformation of thick graphite/epoxy composite materials as well. With the development of the CSD method it will now be possible to examine in greater detail the progression of fatigue damage in these materials, allowing a much faster and more quantitative analysis than was previously available.     

Technique for compensating excessive rigid body motion in nondestructive testing of large structures using shearography

A major limitation of speckle interferometry techniques including shearography is that the occurrence of rigid body motion produces a decorrelation of speckle patterns which destroys the fringe visibility. This paper demonstrates that digital shearography can tolerate much greater rigid body translation than a speckle size as predicted by the conventional speckle decorrelation theory. Excessive rigid body translation in digital shearography can be compensated by either translating the sensor/camera or digitally shifting one of the speckle patterns.     

Effects of red blood cell aggregates dissociation on the estimation of ultrasound speckle image velocimetry

Ultrasound speckle image of blood is mainly attributed by red blood cells (RBCs) which tend to form RBC aggregates. RBC aggregates are separated into individual cells when the shear force is over a certain value. The dissociation of RBC aggregates has an influence on the performance of ultrasound speckle image velocimetry (SIV) technique in which a cross-correlation algorithm is applied to the speckle images to get the velocity field information. The present study aims to investigate the effect of the dissociation of RBC aggregates on the estimation quality of SIV technique. Ultrasound B-mode images were captured from the porcine blood circulating in a mock-up flow loop with varying flow rate. To verify the measurement performance of SIV technique, the centerline velocity measured by the SIV technique was compared with that measured by Doppler spectrograms. The dissociation of RBC aggregates was estimated by using decorrelation of speckle patterns in which the subsequent window was shifted as much as the speckle displacement to compensate decorrelation caused by in-plane loss of speckle patterns. The decorrelation of speckles is considerably increased according to shear rate. Its variations are different along the radial direction. Because the dissociation of RBC aggregates changes ultrasound speckles, the estimation quality of SIV technique is significantly correlated with the decorrelation of speckles. This degradation of measurement quality may be improved by increasing the data acquisition rate. This study would be useful for simultaneous measurement of hemodynamic and hemorheological information of blood flows using only speckle images.     

Shot-noise detection of ultrasound-tagged photons in ultrasound-modulated optical imaging

We propose a new detection method for ultrasound-modulated optical tomography that allows us to perform parallel speckle detection with optimum shot-noise sensitivity, using a CCD camera. Moreover, we show that making use of a spatial filter system allows us to fully filter out speckle decorrelation noise. This method is confirmed by a test experiment.     

Speckle correlation for the analysis of random processes at rough surfaces

The importance of technological processes like corrosion, ablation or deposition causes interest in the quantitative monitoring of changes at rough surfaces. Thus, there is a need for effective methods to measure the statistical parameters characterizing changes in the profile or the material composition of such objects. The speckle field scattered from the surface is used as information carrier and its change is measured by correlation. This is realized by sophisticated data acquisition and digital processing techniques. An important issue is the interpretation of the correlation output in terms of statistical parameters describing the surface change. For many random surfaces a geometrical relation between surface profile and optical phase proves satisfactory. This allows to determine the standard deviation of the profile change. For a verification, speckle decorrelation in model surfaces of known deviation is measured. The paper introduces the speckle correlation concept, outlines some history and current setups and describes methods for data evaluation. The reliability of the quantitative interpretation of the speckle decorrelation is demonstrated. The method is illustrated by studies of metal corrosion and material removal in the cleaning of historical objects by laser ablation.     

三温区溶质传输助熔剂法生长BaTiO_3晶体

ＢａＴｉＯ３晶体新的生长方法，即感应加热三温区溶质传输熔剂法。其要点使高温熔体分为三个温区，坩埚顶部为生长区（Ａ区），温度最低，坩埚底部为溶解区（Ｃ区），温度高于生长区，营养料置于此区，坩埚中部为高温区（Ｂ区），在此区将杂晶熔解。还阐述了此法的机理，调试创造了稳定适宜的三温区温场。用此法生长出了优质ＳＴｉＯ３大单晶，尺寸达３０×３０×１５ｍｍ，并初步观测了其畴结构形貌，实验测定了晶格常数和居里点。     

数字剪切散班干涉术中的刚体位移补偿的新方法

给出一个数字剪切散斑干涉术中的刚体位移补偿的新方法。当刚体位移大于一个像素时，加载前后的散斑图将会由于位置的变化导致失相关。重新安排每一个像素将会克服此失相关。散斑平均、条纹重构以及迭代方法用来改善条纹质量，消除散斑噪声，最后得到可取结果。     

Laser speckle decorrelation in NDT

The random noise of the laser speckle field which develops at the focusing plane of an imaging system, is, by now, efficiently used in several interferometric techniques as an information carrier of the macroscopic wavefront distortion induced by the surface displacement field of the object under investigation. The actual noise in this kind of techniques is represented by the speckle decorrelation at the image plane — i.e. the destruction of the carrier — which may be caused by the modification of the texture surface (e.g. by yielding under a severe stress state), but it is inherently produced by the same displacement field under measurement. In the paper the phenomenon of laser speckle decorrelation is numerically simulated and experimentally investigated with the aim of estimating its sensitivity to local deformation and assessing a possible field of application. Satisfactory results in the field of NDT of multilayer fiber-reinforced composites were obtained by reducing the diaphragm of the lens to increase the sensitivity of the imaging system to speckle decorrelation induced by local deformation; unfortunately this simple approach requires a considerable amount of laser power for illuminating the object. Different aperture shapes were therefore numerically simulated which provided improved efficiency and sensitivity and whereby a semi-quantitative analysis of the displacement field could be experimented.     

Speckle decorrelation influence on measurements quality in vortex metrology

We study speckle decorrelation effects in connection with conventional vortex metrology techniques. Our proposal is based on processing speckled images recorded by using two different experimental set-ups. In both schemes two laterally displaced patterns are generated: one scheme allows for obtaining undecorrelated speckle distributions and the other for decorrelated ones. Vortex networks associated with speckle patterns are analyzed by employing the usual tools developed for vortex metrology. For each recorded image, a 2D pseudo-phase map is generated on the basis of the Reisz transform. Then the vortices are located, and parameterized in terms of their topological charge, eccentricity, vorticity and angles between the zero crossing lines from the real and the imaginary parts of the analytical signal. After tracking the homologous vortices onto the maps, the histograms corresponding to the coordinate displacements are analyzed. We show that histograms interpretation is prone to failure due to its high sensitivity to decorrelation. Experimental evidences are presented to support the restrictions imposed by decorrelation of actual speckles due to uniform in-plane displacements.     

Atherosclerotic plaque characterization by spatial and temporal speckle pattern analysis

Improved methods are needed to identify the vulnerable coronary plaques responsible for acute myocardial infraction or sudden cardiac death. We describe a method for characterizing the structure and biomechanical properties of atherosclerotic plaques based on speckle pattern fluctuations. Near-field speckle images were acquired from five human aortic specimens ex vivo. The speckle decorrelation time constant varied significantly for vulnerable aortic plaques (tau=40 ms) versus stable plaques (tau=400 ms) and normal aorta (tau=500 ms) . These initial results indicate that different atherosclerotic plaque types may be distinguished by analysis of temporal and spatial speckle pattern fluctuations.     

Spacetime correlation functions of dynamic speckles produced by a series of moving phase screens

Spacetime correlation functions of the time-varying speckle intensity have been evaluated for the case where speckle patterns are produced in the Fresnel diffraction region by light propagating through a series of moving random-phase screens. The correlation functions are given by a set of recursion formulae which are useful for numerical computations. Three statistical quantities relating to the motion of speckle patterns are derived to examine the relationship between the velocity distribution of the phase screens and the temporal behaviour of resultant speckle patterns. It is found that the velocity differences between the phase screens have a strong effect on both the decorrelation of speckle patterns and the fluctuating speed of the speckle intensity.     

Additive-subtractive phase-modulated speckle interferometry: Fringe visibility under partial decorrelation

Additive-subtractive phase modulated speckle interferometry (ASPMSI) is a technique that minimizes the susceptibility of speckle methods to environmental noise while providing fringes of good visibility. The method requires the acquisition of two consecutive video frames of additive-speckle images of the same two deformed states of an object at a rapid enough rate such that ambient noise is not a problem. The additive-speckle images as expected are of very poor visibility due to the presence of the self-interference term. An interframe phase-modulation is introduced and the two additive-speckle images are digitally subtracted to improve the fringe visibility by removing the self-interference term. The ASPM-SI method works with in-plane and out-of-plane deformation sensitive ESPI as well as with displacement-gradient sensitive speckle-shearing interferometry. It is shown that the ASPM-SI scheme has higher visibility than conventional additive-SI and performs consistently better than subtractive-SI schemes in the presence of partial interframe speckle decorrelating optical noise. Furthermore, it is shown that the fringe visibility of the out-of-plane displacement sensitive interferometer which uses a protected reference beam separate from the object beam can be made to be essentially unity even at complete interframe decorrelation.     

Wavefront Shaping for Fast Focusing Light through Scattering Media Based on Parallel Wavefront Optimization and Superpixel Method

When light travels in biological tissues,it undergoes multiple scattering and forms speckles,which seriousl.y restricts the penetration depth of optical imaging in biological tissues.With wavefront shaping method,by modulating the wavefront of incident light to compensate for the wavefront aberration,light focusing and scanning imaging through scattering media can be achieved.However,wavefront shaping must be accomplished within the speckle decorrelation time.Considering the short speckle decorrelation time of living tissues,the speed of wavefront shaping is rather essential We propose a new iterative optimization wavefront shaping method to improve the speed of wavefront shaping in which the existing parallel optimization wavefront shaping method is improved and is combined with the superpixel method.Compared with the traditional multi-frequency parallel optimization method,the modulation rate of our method is doubled.Moreover,we combine the high frame rate amplitude modulator,i.e.,the digital micromirror device(DMD),with the superpixel method to replace the traditional phase modulator(i.e.,spatial light modulator),which further increases the optimization speed.In our experiment,when the number of the optical modes is 400,light focusing is achieved with only 1000 DMD superpixel masks and the enhancement factor reaches 223.Our approach provides a new path for fast light focusing through wavefront shaping.     

Correlation between roughness and porosity in rocks

The porosity of rocks is a very important parameter in the determination of the performance of oil wells. Optical methods allow us to study surface roughness and different materials that have surface properties with random characteristics.Therefore, we have extended these applications to porosity analysis. In our method, we have used the speckle produced by the scattered light from a porous rock, illuminated by a laser beam, and found a linear relationship between the decorrelation of the speckle intensity distribution and the porosity magnitude. In this paper we present the results for samples extracted from oil wells in Argentina.     

Speckle detection for 3D ultrasound

Positioning accuracy of 3D ultrasound slice planes can be enhanced by speckle decorrelation of the B-scans. A suitable method requires accurate identification of zones of non-specular reflection in the image, a feature of parenchymal tissue. This has traditionally been achieved with statistics such as signal-to-noise ratios and measures of autocorrelation curves. Co-occurrence matrices and structural approaches have also been applied to ultrasound images. In this paper we assess the performance of these methods when only B-scan display data is available. We also report improved results with in vivo images using a proposed structural algorithm that detects speckle kernels. All detection algorithms yielded detection error rates between 28% and 38%, suggesting that user intervention may be required for clinically useful performance.     

Adaptive optics interferometer using superspeckles for high resolution deformation measurement

Digital speckle pattern interferometry (DSPI) is a well-known technique for measuring deformations, but it is limited in range by speckle decorrelation. We developed an adaptive interferometer with increased measurement range by combining the DSPI set-up with a pupil filter that generates optical superresolution. As a result, a decrease in the transverse speckle size is observed accompanied with a substantial increase in the longitudinal speckle size. The increase in the speckle correlation length along the optical axis allows for obtaining an out-of-plane deformation measurement over a significantly extended depth. An experimental verification of this concept of superspeckles is presented with an intensity-only LCD spatial light modulator (SLM) acting as a pupil filter. Comparison of speckle correlation fringes with and without the superresolution filter confirms the proposed concept. The present work demonstrates a doubling of the measurement range when using the superresolution interferometer. A standard set-up in which the speckle length is comparably elongated by stopping down the lens has a similar loss of intensity, but its lateral resolution is only half as good.     

Spacetime correlation functions of dynamic speckles produced by a series of moving phase screens

Abstract

Spacetime correlation functions of the time-varying speckle intensity have been evaluated for the case where speckle patterns are produced in the Fresnel diffraction region by light propagating through a series of moving random-phase screens. The correlation functions are given by a set of recursion formulae which are useful for numerical computations. Three statistical quantities relating to the motion of speckle patterns are derived to examine the relationship between the velocity distribution of the phase screens and the temporal behaviour of resultant speckle patterns. It is found that the velocity differences between the phase screens have a strong effect on both the decorrelation of speckle patterns and the fluctuating speed of the speckle intensity.     

Correlation of speckle patterns generated by laser point source — Illuminated diffusers

In this paper it is shown that, when a ground-glass transilluminated by a diverging or converging beam is axially translated, there exists a particular plane in which the corresponding speckle pattern remains correlated. Consequently, under some experimental conditions on this incident beam and the geometry of the optical setup, a speckle pattern generated by a set of two parallel ground-glasses suffers no decorrelation when one of them is axially or laterally translated.     

Experiments on the space and wavelength dependence of speckle

A comprehensive series of speckle experiments is described for opal glass diffusers ranging in thickness from 10 to 500 μm. Wavelength decorrelation measurements are made using a cw dye laser source; and accurate square-law detection is provided by the use of an optic-fiber, photomultiplier combination rather than film. For this diffuser set intensity distribution functions, polarized and unpolarized, are plotted. Second-order correlation functions are presented for different apertures, relating diffuser motion and probe motion. Remote texture determination using contrast ratio and frequency decorrelation is illustrated.     

Analysis of speckle in ultrasound images using fractional order statistics and the homodyned k-distribution

It is necessary to identify speckled regions in ultrasound images to control adaptive speckle suppression algorithms, for tissue characterisation, and to estimate the elevational separation of B-scans by speckle decorrelation. Previous authors have proposed classification techniques based on second order powers of the homodyned k-distribution, or lower order powers of the more limited k-distribution. In this paper we explore the speckle discrimination properties of statistics based on arbitrary powers of the ultrasound echo envelope signal using a combination of simulations and theoretical results from the homodyned k-distribution. We conclude that statistics based on powers less than one are surprisingly less effective than some higher powers. A simple discriminant function for speckle is evaluated quantitatively in simulation and qualitatively on sample B-scan images.