A Practical Image-based Measuring Method of Laser Spot Size

摘要

There is generally an important performance gap between theoretical and experimental results of optical designs. In theoretical results, all factors seem to be perfect but experimental results are highly affected from real factors such as production criteria, atmospheric conditions, experimental environment etc. Therefore, a certain number of practical tests have to be done in field in order to change parameters to compensate for these factors. In case of laser optical designs, some specific tests are done in order to make the needed laser spot size which is achieved in analysis software to the practical spot size. Generally, manual inspection of the spot after each test by an expert or complex spot analysis tools are required. However, these methods are generally over-complex for simple spot size calculations. In this work, we propose a method to inspect and measure laser spot size on a material remotely using a camera and an analysis software we developed. Using the proposed image processing pipeline in the software, the laser spot image on the material is captured from the camera and processed in order to give a final spot size value in pixels. This method provides an easy, flexible and effective spot size calculation and experimental comparison. In addition, our work includes a comparison of two different processing techniques for calculating spot size. Using our proposed method, we got fast and accurate practical results in comparison with tests which are done using manual inspection or expensive tools.