High-Speed Well-Focused Image-Capturing System for Moving Micro-Objects Based on Histograms of the Luminance

Abstract

In recent years, vision-based analysis systems of micro-objects in a microchannel have been actively developed. However, it is difficult to focus on high-speed micro-objects in a microchannel because the general height of a microchannel is approximately 10-100 μm, whereas the depth of focus of the objective lens is approximately 1-4 μm. Therefore, we propose a high-speed well-focused image-capturing microscope, which is a system with an objective lens attached to a vibration machine that moves the focus position rapidly by oscillating it up and down to capture well-focused images using a histogram-based algorithm. The proposed microscope system is verified experimentally to capture well-focused images of moving micro- objects.