Quantization of surface rust by using laser imaging techniques

Laser speckle interferometry^1,2 and image processing^3,4 have been used to detect and quantize the rust build-up on metal surfaces under water. Speckle information from the sample metal surface was captured by a CCD camera and a frame grabber card. Software techniques were used to convert the image data files into ASCII files in an appropriate format. Three-dimensional surface plots were generated to define the numerical values for the amout of rust build-up.