I N T R O D U C T I O N Optical diffraction and filtering of electron micrographs offers an objective method for analysing periodic structures. Because the preservation of detail in electron micrographs usually is not perfect, many micrographs must be examined and assessed to identify images suitable for analysis. I t is useful to have an instrument that allows one to survey many dozens of elec...

A large radius secondary ion mass spectrometer (SIMS) has been used for in situ stable isotope analyses of geological samples at the scale of 1–10 mm. However, the original reflected light microscope of the CAMECA IMS 1280 SIMS had an optical resolution of 3.5 mm, which made it difficult to accurately position the analytical beam on the sample at the mm scale. We modified the optical microscope...

We report on the development of a compact commercial instrument for measuring carotenoids in skin tissue. The instrument uses two light-emitting diodes (LEDs) for dual-wavelength excitation and four photomultiplier tubes for multichannel detection. Bandpass filters are used to select the excitation detection wavelengths. The f1.3 optical system has high optical throughput and single photon sens...

Optical tracking systems are widely adopted in surgical navigation. An optical tracking system is designed based on the principle of stereo vision with high-precision and low cost. This system uses optical infrared LEDs that are installed on the surgical instrument as markers and a near-infrared filter is added in front of the Bumblebee2 stereo camera lens to eliminate the interference of ambie...

Context. The Crab pulsar emits across a large part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Determining the time delay between the emission at different wavelengths will allow to better constrain the site and mechanism of the emission.We have simultaneously observed the Crab Pulsar in the optical with S-Cam, an instrument based on Superconducting Tunneling Junctions (STJs) with μs time resolution and a...

ABSTRACT This paper presents results of a study of some of the characteristics of a PDR-1 digital strong-motion accelerograph. Results are presented for laboratory tests of the background noise level of the instrument, and these results are compared with previously reported observations for optical instruments. Noise levels for the digital instrument are found to be one or two orders of magnitu...

The combination of X-ray diffraction experiments with optical methods such as Raman, UV/Vis absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy greatly enhances and complements the specificity of the obtained information. The upgraded version of the in situ on-axis micro-spectrophotometer, MS2, at the macromolecular crystallography beamline X10SA of the Swiss Light Source is presented. The instrument newl...

The paper is concerned with a new instrument, nanobalance, measuring thrust and noise of space micro-thrusters in the range 0-1 mN with submicronewton accuracy. Low-noise micro-thrusters will be essential for upcoming "drag-free" space missions like GOCE, SMART-2, LISA, and Darwin. Nanobalance departs from traditional thrust measuring concepts so as to exploit sensitivity of in-vacuum Fabry-Pér...

This paper presents a robotic vision system that automatically retrieves and positions surgical instruments during robotized laparoscopic surgical operations. The instrument is mounted on the end-effector of a surgical robot which is controlled by visual servoing. The goal of the automated task is to safely bring the instrument at a desired three-dimensional location from an unknown or hidden p...

A holographic optical element (HOE) is a kind of diffractive optical element. It can replace an optical system with multiple optical components such as lenses, mirrors, beamsplitters, and prisms. Thus, it is expected to be possible improve performance and reduce the number of optical parts of various optical systems, such as optical storage systems 1) like compact disk or digital versatile disk...