Granularity growth of laser speckle and its application to surface inspection

A process of granularity growth in partially developed speckle patterns produced in the near field of wavy object surfaces illuminated using a laser has been experimentally studied by investigating the probability density function and average contrast of their intensity variations. These parameters have been measured as a function of the distance from the object surface to the detector for four typical sample objects having different surface qualities. It has been found that the variation in average speckle contrast with receiving distance is strongly dependent on the surface quality of the objects. The saturated value of the speckle contrast, found from the graph of its dependence on receiving distance, is also related to the maximum height of irregularities in the surface.