Micropositioning system for robotized optical microscopy

Hexapod Positioner

- Linear Kinematics Laboratory Robot with 6 Degree of Freedom.

Hexapod stage for micropositioning in robotized optical microscopy

Classic Stewart Platform[1] is chosen. For convenience presentation of the position of the Hexapod is presented in terms of translation of the motion plate and rotation between both coordinate systems O(x,y,z) and O ̃(x ̃,y ̃,z ̃)

•Provide automation of different optical microscopy tasks with a single device

•Allow collection of data at known position and orientation to the optical axes of the microscope

•Allow object tracking in real time with the microscope

•Support precision adequate for reflective optical microscopy and this way avoid high price high precision hexapod solutions

Applications – Panoramic Microscopy

•By moving the stage in a horizontal plane and keeping the field of view of the microscope partially overlap-ping one can obtain using a proper algorithm a combined image.

•A short range autofocus algorithm can be applied as well to improve the quality of the results.

Panoramic Microscopy of an electronic board delivering ultra-high resolution result. Measurments can be done based on that image with high reliability

Applications – Depth of Field

A sequence of images taken at different Z coordinate provides different parts of the object on focus. The depth of filed algorithm finds the area on focus using a wavelet approach and computes a 3D reconstruction.

Below a Microscopy of a tooth processed for a seal – partial view due to high magnification. At a arbitrary chosen stripe a scan with laser beam scanner delivers similar results.

Depth of filed images producing a 3D reconstruction of a tooth. Comparison of a slice 3 D profile and comparision

Applications – Multi viewpoint stereo

A rotation of the stage allow collection of specimen image from different angles. A 3D reconstruction after having a disparity MAP then is possible.

A multipoint view stereo-reconstruction can provide reasonable amount of data for optimizing the epipolar geometry in a way to reconstruct the real object.

Problems with occlusion and other issues related to 2 view point stereo can also be checked and cleared.

Series of images collected in different angles (top line), depth of view map and 3D reconstruction (bottom line)

For more details, please visist Avramov robotized stage for optical microscopy