Mechanism of speckle reduction in laser-microscope images using a rotating optical fiber

The reduction mechanism of speckles appearing in laser-microscope images is studied theoretically and experimentally when an object is illuminated by laser light through a rotating multimode optical fiber. The principle of the speckle reduction is based on independent addition of microscope images with boiling-like speckles as a result of the rotational motion of the optical fiber used for illumination. Especially, the speckle reduction is evaluated from first-order statistics of the speckle intensity in which its saturation effect is taken into consideration.     

Point-wise and whole-field laser speckle intensity fluctuation measurements applied to botanical specimens

Based on multi-scattering speckle theory, the speckle fields generated by plant specimens irradiated by laser light have been studied using a pointwise method. In addition, a whole-field method has been developed with which entire botanical specimens may be studied. Results are reported from measurements made on tomato and apple fruits, orange peel, leaves of tobacco seedlings, leaves of shihu seedlings (a Chinese medicinal herb), soy-bean sprouts, and leaves from an unidentified trailing houseplant. Although differences where observed in the temporal fluctuations of speckles that could be ascribed to differences in age and vitality, the growing tip of the bean sprout and the shihu seedling both generated virtually stationary speckles such as were observed from boiled orange peel and from localised heat-damaged regions on apple fruit. Our results suggest that both the identity of the botanical specimen and the site at which measurements are taken are likely to critically affect the observation or otherwise of temporal fluctuations of laser speckles.     

Some recent advances in electronic speckle photography

Major advances in electronic speckle photography are reviewed. Topics include the correlation properties of laser speckles, the principles and expected accuracy of electronic speckle photography, the effect of the digital recording and evaluation, and some recent applications. These applications involve two techniques for the measurement of 3D deformation fields, measurement of the in-plane strain field components using defocused laser speckle, and measurement of object shape.     

Velocity and density field measurements by digital speckle method

Velocity and density field measurements based on image processing of laser speckle or pseudo-speckle pattern have been developed. Laser speckle velocimetry (LSV) or white-light speckle velocimetry (WSV), which corresponds to a high-image-density PIV, gives a local velocity vector map or whole field velocity contour map of a two-dimensional flow field seeded densely with fine particles. This technique has an advantage in high-speed flow measurement without limit of frame rate except for directional ambiguity. New techniques of laser speckle photography and laser speckle interferometry by means of digital image processing have been developed recently for density field measurements. In laser speckle photography, a local density gradient vector map is reconstructed by cross-correlation evaluation between the reference and the object speckle patterns. In laser speckle interferometry, an equi-density contour map is reconstructed by image subtraction between the reference and the object interferometric speckle patterns.     

Dynamic laser speckles and their application to velocity measurements of the diffuse object

In connection with the parameters of the optical configuration used to produce speckles and under illumination of a Gaussian beam over a moving diffuse object, this paper discusses the statistical properties of dynamic speckles produced in the diffraction and image fields by the diffuse object moving in a plane with constant velocity. Especially, the space-time correlation function of the dynamic speckle intensity is examined in detail. Two typical speckle motions of translation and boiling are interpreted for various optical configurations in the diffraction and image fields. As one of the interesting applications of dynamic speckles to metrology, various methods for velocity measurements of the diffuse object are introduced.     

Measurements of axial displacements undergone by a diffusing object in speckle photography

The speckles of the image plane of an object are both radially shifted and decorrelated when the object is axially translated through an amount ?. We demonstrate that this radial shift, which is related to the position of the pupil of the optical system, disappears when the pupil lies in the back focal plane of the imaging lens. However, if the irradiance of the image plane is twice recorded on a photographic plate which is laterally shifted through ζ_H between the exposures, the minimum value of the contrast of the Fourier fringes exhibited by the plate after processing, gives the value of ? if ? is less than a particular value, ?_M which will be defined. Also we propose a new speckle measurement method in which the fringes are automatically removed when ? is greater than ?_M. We record the image of the object illuminated in convergent light through an amplitude diffuser placed in the Fourier plane of the object. The mean speckle speckle size of the diffuser is equal to the mean size of the speckles generated by the object in its Fourier plane.     

Dynamic properties of speckled speckles with relation to velocity measurements of a diffuse object

This paper investigates, experimentally, the dynamic properties of triply-scattered speckled speckles and their application to the velocity measurement of a moving diffuse object, which is behind a transparent diffuse screen. The comparison between triply-scattered speckled speckles and singly-scattered normal speckles shows that the triply-scattered speckle pattern has a high degree of randomness in the spatial domain and that its time-varying intensity fluctuations have a rate 72 times that of the normal speckle case in the temporal domain. Consequently, a velocimeter using the triply-scattered speckles can measure the object velocity with a greatly reduced measuring time than when using normal speckles.     

白光处理系统中用散斑编码作立体投影

本文提供了用不同方向的狭缝构成的光瞳函数来调制散斑作图象编码的原理和实验结果。与现行通用的光栅编码相比较,它有不必翻成正透明片、操作简单和足够的分辨本领的优点;特别是在多重图象处理中,它不出现光栅编码中容易产生的莫尔条纹。作为实例,文中给出用散斑编码作白光立体投影的实验结果。 关键词：     

Velocity sensitivity of laser-speckle velocimeters

The method of increasing sensitivity in laser speckle velocimetry is studied theoretically and experimentally. The sensitivity of the velocimeters is shown to have a fairly strong dependence on the optical configurations, such as the diameter of the incident laser beam-waist, or its position relative to the moving diffuse object to be measured. It is pointed out that the minimal sensitivity appears in the configuration where the converging incident light beam produces its beam waist at the position of a detecting pinhole. In some cases when using image speckles to obtain finite spatial resolution in the object plane, an optimum condition exists which gives the maximal sensitivity. The sensitivity of a laser speckle velocimeter using a spatial filter and two point cross-correlation technique is also discussed.     

菲涅耳衍射区和夫琅和费衍射区的动态部分相干光散斑场特性

研究了菲涅耳衍射区和夫琅和费衍射区动态部分相干光散斑的特性.利用部分相干光互强度传播的理论，得出了在部分相干光照明时，由运动散射体产生的动态散斑光强时空交叉的自相关函数的一般形式，并由此得出了散斑沸腾和平移的一般规律.通过适当选择光源和调整光路参数，在实验上得到了菲涅耳和夫琅和费衍射区的部分相干光散斑，对夫琅和费面上的动态部分相干光散斑的平移和沸腾现象进行了定性研究；采用光子计数及数据自动采集的方法，对部分相干光散斑随时间的演化及动态部分相干光散斑的沸腾进行了定量测量.这些实验结果与理论结果相符合. 关键词： 部分相干光动态散斑 时空交叉相关函数 沸腾     

Statistics of Gaussian Speckles with Enhanced Fluctuations

Some first-order statistics of speckle fields obeying the complex Gaussian probability density are investigated with the special emphasis on a possibility for the speckle contrast to exceed unity. It is shown that such enhanced fluctuations of speckle fields are generated when the probability density of the complex amplitude is non-circular with the vanishing mean. This means that Gaussian speckles having the contrast of unity are not necessarily fully developed speckles. Some practical situations producing such enhanced fluctuations in speckle fields are discussed.     

用偏振和有规位相分布抑制线聚焦系统的小尺度不均匀性

研究了一种用以抑制光楔列线聚焦系统在靶面产生的干涉尖端的方法。由这种尖峰引起的小尺度不均匀性对Ｘ射线激光的产生是不利的。利用特殊分布的偏振态和位相，可把尖峰引向更密度伯程度，而且其对比度下降，这将有利于它通过靶物质自身的横向热传导而平滑化。对于四单元的列阵系统，甚至可将尖峰完全消除。     

Robust technique of analyzing and locating laser speckle patterns for optical computer mice

Laser speckles have been used in measurement techniques, since they were discovered to be correlated with the displacement of the light source. This paper presents a robust technique of analyzing and locating laser speckle patterns (LSPs) for a prototype of a laser optical mouse. After the speckle images are captured from the image-grabbing device, they are analyzed by the proposed image processing procedures and normalized cross-correlation (NCC) is adopted to develop position-locating rules for laser speckle patterns. To verify robustness of the proposed approach, nine different materials of mouse pad are used. Experimental results show that they have all achieved similar and promising performance. Therefore, the proposed technique can not only precisely calculate the moving directions and displacement information for laser speckles, the linearity for the prototype of laser mouse can also be verified.     

光源编码的白光散斑剪切干涉计量术

本文提出了一种用非相干光源照明进行剪切干涉计量的方法—光源编码的白光散斑剪切干涉计量术.它采用光栅对光源进行编码以提高空间相干性,使物体的两个剪切像的波面部分相干叠加,以实现剪切干涉.     

Quality assessment of speckle patterns for digital image correlation

Digital image correlation (DIC) is an optical–numerical full-field displacement measuring technique, which is nowadays widely used in the domain of experimental mechanics. The technique is based on a comparison between pictures taken during loading of an object. For an optimal use of the method, the object of interest has to be covered with painted speckles. In the present paper, a comparison is made between three different speckle patterns originated by the same reference speckle pattern. A method is presented for the determination of the speckle size distribution of the speckle patterns, using image morphology. The images of the speckle patterns are numerically deformed based on a finite element simulation. Subsequently, the displacements are measured with DIC-software and compared to the imposed ones. It is shown that the size of the speckles combined with the size of the used pixel subset clearly influences the accuracy of the measured displacements.     

散斑位移量与照明激光束特性关系的实验研究

激光照射到粗糙物体的表面会形成激光散斑，散斑随物体的运动而运动，特别是物体在自身平面内运动时散斑的同步运动比较显著，因此可以用这一现象测物体的微小位移，散斑运动规律与照明光束的特性有关，本文通过实验研究了不同光束照明下散斑位移的规律，验证了散斑位移理论，并指出散斑位移测量中应注意的问题。     

Angular dependence of screen speckle and fiber speckle of coupled output of nine high-power blue laser diodes through a multi-mode fiber

Angular dependence of speckle contrast of speckle pattern projected out of a multi-mode fiber connected to a high-power blue laser module is investigated. The laser module has nine high-power InGaN/GaN blue laser diodes arranged in a three-by-three array. Each of the arrayed laser diodes have slightly different incident angle to the fiber. We have successfully extracted the fine screen speckle pattern from the projected pattern mixed up with the coarse fiber speckle pattern by processing the measured data. It is found that the speckle contrast of the both screen and fiber speckles are larger around the center area where the guided-light component closest to the paraxial direction is projected. This is because the output of the center laser in the array is likely to couple into the paraxial mode more than the rest. Speckle contrast behaviors when applying the speckle reduction methods, fiber vibration, diffuser, and spinning diffuser are also investigated.     

Toward Defeating Diffraction and Randomness for Laser Beam Propagation in Turbulent Atmosphere

A large distance propagation in turbulent atmosphere results in disintegration of laser beam into speckles. We find that the most intense speckle approximately preserves both the Gaussian shape and the diameter of the initial collimated beam while loosing energy during propagation. One per 1000 of atmospheric realizations produces at 7 km distance an intense speckle above 28% of the initial power. Such optimal realizations create effective extended lenses focusing the intense speckle beyond the diffraction limit of vacuum propagation. Atmospheric realizations change every several milliseconds. We propose to use intense speckles to greatly increase the time-averaged power delivery to the target plane by triggering the pulsed laser operations only at times of optimal realizations. Resulting power delivery and laser irradiance at the intense speckles well exceeds both intensity of diffraction-limited beam and intensity averaged over typical realizations.     

Determination of the resolving power of optical systems in the formation of speckle images

Relations for the calculation of the limiting resolvable spatial frequency of a speckle image of a line mira used as a test object in the determination of the optical power of optical systems are presented. The influence of the speckle structure on the extraction of information about the shape of the object observed from the image recorded is taken into account by using the equivalent modulation transfer characteristic of the optical system than determines the transfer of spatial frequencies of the envelope of the speckle image and the threshold characteristic of speckle noise conditioned by fluctuations of the amplitudes of individual speckles. Conditions, in which the prevailing influence on the quality of the image recorded is exerted by the speckle structure, atmospheric phase distortions, and discretization noise, are determined.     

Numerical Simulations on the Formation of Speckles in Nanofluids Illuminated by a TEM00 Laser Beam

On the basis of a Rayleigh scattering model for a single nanoparticle illuminated by a TEMoo laser beam, we theoretically and numerically study the speckle formation when nanofluids are illuminated by a TEMoo laser beam. The results show that the laser speckles possess a Gaussian distribution, which are in agreement with the experimental results. The results may be useful for using a laser speckle velocimetry to determine the velocitiies of nanoparticles in nanofluids.