Image stitching is a technique used to measure large surface areas with high resolution while maintaining a large field of view. We work on improving data fusion by stitching in the field of microscopic analysis of technical surfaces for structures and roughness. Guidance errors and imaging errors such as noise cause problems for seamless image fusion of technical surfaces. The optical imaging errors of 3D Microscopes, such as confocal microscopes and white light interferometers, as well as the guidance errors of their automated positioning systems have been measured to create a software to simulate automated measurements of known surfaces with specific deviations to test new stitching algorithms. We measured and incorporated radial image distortion, interferometer reference mirror shape deviations, statistical noise, drift of the positional axis, on-axis-accuracy and repeatability of the used positioning stages and misalignment of the CCD-Chip with respect to the axes of motion. We used the resulting simulation of the measurement process to test a new image registration technique that allows for the use of correlation of images by fast fourier transform for small overlaps between single measurements.

Date Published: 13 May 2013
PDF: 10 pages
Proc. SPIE 8789, Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology IV, 87890G (13 May 2013); doi: 10.1117/12.2020595

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 8789:
Modeling Aspects in Optical Metrology IV
Bernd Bodermann; Karsten Frenner; Richard M. Silver, Editor(s)