Depth from Focus

Here are some typical microscope images (showing a surface, which has been shaped using a power beam).

First surfi-sculpt object

Second surfi-sculpt object

Using a focus-stack one can compute images with extended depth of focus:

Extended depth of view for first object

Extended depth of view for second object

If the surface can be illuminated properly, one can even do a 3D-reconstruction of the surface:

3D reconstruction of first object	3D reconstruction of second object
Stereo picture of first object

As the idea for the algorithm was fixed already, it was possible to implement the algorithm as a command-line tool in less than 4 days, using existing Mimas-software (exspecially the operators for boost::multi_array).

As this is a "quick hack", there's still lots of space for improvements.

Links

• german diploma thesis about depth of focus (also available as PDF)
• Mechrob-paper Focus set based reconstruction of micro-objects