• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.398-407
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• 1999

In the present image processing technique, the concept of the gradient indicator(GI) has been introduced to find out the depth-of-field in sizing large particles ranging from $30{\mu}m$ to $30{\mu}m$ where using of the concept of the normalized contrast value(VC) is not appropriate. The gradient indicator is defined as the ratio of the local value to the maximum possible value of the gray-level gradient in an image frame. The gradient indicator decreases with the increases of the particle size and the distance from the exact focal plane. A particle is considered to be in focus when the value of the gradient indicator at its image boundary stays above a critical value. This critical gradient indicator($GI_{critical}$) is defined as the maximum gradient indicator($GI_{max}$) subtracted by a constant ${\Delta}GI$ which is to account for the particle-size effect. In the present ca.so, the value of ${\Delta}GI$ was set to 0.28 to keep the standard deviation of the measured particles mostly within 0.1. It was also confirmed that, to find the depth-of-field for small particles(${\leq}30{\mu}m$) with the same measurement accuracy, tho concept of the critical normalized contrast($VC_{critical}$) is applicable with 85% of the maximum normalized contrast value($VC_{max}$). Finally, the depth-of-field was checked for the size range between $10{\mu}m$ and $300{\mu}m$ when the both in-focus criteria ($GI_{critical}$ and $VC_{critical}$) were adopted. The change of the depth-of-field with the particle size shows good linearity in both the VC-applicable and the GI-applicable ranges with a reasonable accuracy.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.599-607
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• 2000

In this study, experiments have been performed to examine the effects of background gray-level on the depth-of-field and on the in-focus criteria. The normalized value of contrast(VC) and the gradient indicator(GI) were used as the in-focus criteria for the small and the large size-ranges of particles, respectively. The slightly larger number of pixels were detected with the brighter background. The maximum of the normalized value of contrast(VCmax) is decreased with the brighter background and its deviation from that with the background gray-level of 160 turned out to be about $pm$15% when the background gray-level changes from 100 to 200. However, the maximum gradient indicator(GImax) changes with the background gray-level within only $pm$5%. The depth-of-field for the VC-applicable particle-size range is largely dependent on the background gray-level. On the other hand, the depth-of-field for the GI-applicable particle-size range changes only slightly with the background gray-level. To keep the normalized standard deviation of the particle size within 0.1, the background gray-level should be set 160$pm$20 for both the VC-applicable and GI-applicable ranges which cover the particle size between $10{\mu}m$ and $300{\mu}m$.