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Digital holography (DH) has been extensively applied in particle field measurements due to its promising ability to simultaneously provide the three-dimensional location and in-plane size of particles. Particle detection methods are crucial in hologram data processing to determine particle size and particle in-focus depth, which directly affect the measurement accuracy and robustness of DH. In this work, inspired by clustering algorithms, a new clustering-based particle detection (CBPD) method was proposed for DH. To the best of our knowledge this is the first time that clustering algorithms have been applied in processing holograms for particle detection. The results of both simulations and experiments confirmed the feasibility of our proposed method. This data-driven method features automatic recognition of particles, particle edges and background, and accurate separation of overlapping particles. Compared with seven conventional particle detection methods, the CBPD method has improved accuracy in measuring particle positions and displacements.

Many processes taking place in atmospheric aerosol particles are accompanied by changes in the particles’ morphology (size and shape), with potentially significant impact on weather and climate. However, the characterization of dynamic information on particle morphology and position over multiple time scales from microseconds to days under atmospherically relevant conditions has proven very challenging. Here we introduce holographic imaging of unsupported aerosol particles in air that are spatially confined by optical traps. Optical trapping in air allows contact-free observation of aerosol particles under relevant conditions and provides access to extended observation times, while the digital in-line holographic microscope provides six-dimensional spatial maps of particle positions and orientations with maximum spatial resolution in the sub-micron range and a temporal resolution of 240 μs. We demonstrate the broad applicability of our approach for a few examples and discuss its prospects for future aerosol studies, including the study of complex, multi-step phase transitions. Obtaining dynamic information on atmospheric aerosol particle size and morphology is typically challenging. Here, the authors introduce holographic imaging of unsupported aerosol particles in air that are spatially confined by optical traps, allowing contact free observation over multiple timescales.

In the artificially affected weather, the detection of cloud droplets particles provides an important reference for the effective impact of artificial weather. Digital holography has the unique advantages of full-field, non-contact, no damage, real-time and quantification. In this paper, coaxial digital holography is used to record the polyethylene standard particles and aluminum scrap, and some important parameters, such as three-dimensional coordinate spatial distribution and particle size, will be obtained by the means of analyzing the digital hologram of the particle. The experimental results verify the feasibility of the coaxial digital holographic device applied to the measurement of the cloud parameters, and complete the construction of the coaxial digital holographic system and the measurement of the particles.

Using simulations based on Mie theory, this work shows how double-exposure digital holography can be used to measure the change in size of an expanding, or contracting, spherical particle. Here, a single particle is illuminated by a plane wave twice during its expansion: once when the particle is 27 λ in radius, and again when it is 47 λ . A hologram is formed from each illumination stage from the interference of the scattered and unscattered, i.e., incident, light. The two holograms are then superposed to form a double exposure. By applying the Fresnel–Kirchhoff diffraction theory to the double-exposed hologram, a silhouette-like image of the particle is computationally reconstructed that is superposed with interference fringes. These fringes are a direct result of the change in particle size occurring between the two illumination stages. The study finds that expansion on the scale of ~ 6 λ is readily discerned from the reconstructed particle image. This work could be important for improved characterization of single and multiple aerosol particles in situ. For example, by illuminating an aerosol particle with infrared light, it may be possible to measure photothermally induced particle expansion, thus providing insight into a particle׳s material properties simultaneous with an image of the particle.

Coarse mode atmospheric aerosol particles are abundant in agricultural, desert, and urban environments. Accurate characterisation of these particles’ morphology is an important need in scientific and applied contexts, especially to advance our understanding for how such aerosols influence solar radiative forcing of the atmosphere. Elastic light scattering is a standard method to study aerosol particles in a contact-free manner, wherein measured scattering patterns are interpreted to infer particle morphology. Due in part to the absence of wave-phase information in these measurements, the inference is not unique, a difficulty generally known as the inverse problem. An alternative approach is digital holography where wave-phase information is encoded in the measurements. We show that digital holography and spatial filtering can solve the inverse problem for free-flowing aerosol particles in the sense that a measured scattering pattern can be uniquely associated with the particle size, shape, and orientation producing it.

In terms of climate science, getting the accurate cloud particle sizes, shape and number distributions is necessary for searching the influence of cloud on the environment, radiative transfer, remote sensing measurements and understanding precipitation formation. Many methods and instruments have been developed to measure cloud particles, yet there is still restricted to one-dimensional or two-dimensional projections of particle positions, unable to get the three-dimensional information of the spatial distribution of particles. In-line holography is particularly useful for particles field measurements, because it can directly get the three-dimensional information of the particles and quickly access and storage holographic image. In this paper, the main work is using digital in-line holographic system to measure simulated cloud particles in the laboratory. For digital recording hologram reconstructing, we consider the image intensity in conjunction with the edge sharpness of the particles, to obtain an automatically selected threshold of each particle. Using the threshold, we can get a binary image to identify the particles and separate the particles from background, and then get the information such as the location, shape, particle size of particles. The experimental results show that the in-line digital holography can be used to detect the cloud particles, which can gain many parameters of the simulated cloud particles in the plane perpendicular to the optical axis, and can estimate volume parameters of the simulated cloud particles. This experiment is a basis for the further in situ detection of atmospheric cloud particles.

The 3D measurement of the particles in a gas–solid pipe flow is of great interest, but remains challenging due to curved pipe walls in various engineering applications. Because of the astigmatism induced by the pipe, concentric ellipse fringes in the hologram of spherical particles are observed in the experiments. With a theoretical analysis of the particle holography by an ABCD matrix, the in-focus particle image can be reconstructed by the modified convolution method and fractional Fourier transform. Thereafter, the particle size, 3D position, and velocity are simultaneously measured by digital holographic particle tracking velocimetry (DHPTV). The successful application of DHPTV to the particle size and 3D velocity measurement in a glass pipe’s flow can facilitate its 3D diagnostics.

Minimum intensity projection algorithm has been proposed for 3D characterization of particles in real-time. In this paper, we experimentally explored the accuracy of particle size detection and maximum particle density that the algorithm could handle.

The light scattering properties of a horizontally and vertically oriented spheroidal particle under laser illumination are experimentally investigated using digital in‐line holography. The reconstructed wave field shows the bright singular points as a result of the condensed beam formed by a transparent spheroidal particle acting as a lens. The in‐plane (θ) and out‐of‐plane (ϕ) rotating angles of an arbitrarily oriented spheroidal particle are measured by using these scattering properties. As a feasibility test, the 3D orientation of a transparent spheroidal particle suspended in a microscale pipe flow is successfully reconstructed by adapting the proposed method.

WOS:000339566700020; International audience; Digital holography plays a key role in particle field measurement, and appears to be a strong contender as the next-generation technology for diagnostics of 3D particle field. However, various recording parameters, such as the recording distance, the particle size, the wavelength, the size of the CCD chip, the pixel size and the particle concentration, will affect the results of the reconstruction, and may even determine the success or failure of a measurement. This paper presents a numerical investigation on the effect of particle concentration, the volume depth to evaluate the capability of digital holographic microscopy. Standard particles holograms with all known recording parameters are numerically generated by using a common procedure based on Lorenz-Mie scattering theory. Reconstruction of those holograms are then performed by a wavelet-transform based method. Results show that the reconstruction efficiency decreases quickly until particle concentration reaches 50 X 10(4) (mm(-3)), and decreases linearly with the increase of particle concentration from 50 X 10(4) (mm(-3)) to 860 X 10(4) (mm(-3)) in the same volume. The first half of the line waves larger than the second half. It also indicates that the increase of concentration leads the rise in average diameter error and z position error of particles. Besides, the volume depth also plays a key role in reconstruction.

This paper presents a holographic method for detecting the size of small particles distributed in 3-D space and its performance is evaluated in numerical simulation for the two cases with a single particle and two particles. The present method is based on in-line holography and its digital fringe analysis on a personal computer. The holography with the digital fringe analysis is called digital holography. The detection of particle size is carried out by numerically reconstructing the real image of the particles from hologram patterns observed with a CCD camera. The performance test results show that the radius of particle can be accurately detected by taking a binarization threshold 0.4 and the measurement accuracy is not so affected by the overlap of the interference fringes for two particles adjacent to each other.

Digital holography technology has great potential for application in particle measurement. This paper proposes an atmospheric particle size measuring method using laser, CCD, Wavelet transform and image processing technology base on the study of digital holography. The measurement principle and the system construction are provided. The particle size is measured on the basis of reconstructing particle hologram, denoising the reconstructed image and particles identification using wavelet transform. The study indicates that the measurement method is simple, fast, and real-time and provides a new approach for atmosphere particle measurement.

Digital in-line holographic microscopy has a strong potential in measuring various three-dimensional (3D) microscale flow phenomena. However, the axial elongation problem in reconstructing particles severely degrades the measurement accuracy along the light propagation direction. In this Letter, we utilize the lenslike characteristic of tens of micrometers size transparent spherical particles to extract their 3D position. A sharp intensity peak is observed in the reconstructed wave field, resulting from the light-focusing effect of the particle. As a result, the depth-of-focus constraint caused by the particle size is eliminated and the measurement accuracy is drastically improved up to submicrometer resolution.

Digital holography is an effective 3D imaging technique, with the potential to be used for particle size measurements. A digital hologram can provide reconstructions of volume samples focused at different depths, overcoming the focusing problems encountered by other imaging based techniques. Several particle analysis methods discussed in the literature consider spherical particles only. With the object sphericity assumption in place, analysis of the holographic data can be significantly simplified. However, there are applications, such as particle analysis and crystallization monitoring, where non-spherical particles are often encountered. This paper discusses the processing of digital holograms for particle size and shape measurement for both spherical and arbitrarily shaped particles. An automated algorithm for identification of particles from recorded hologram and subsequent size and shape measurement is described. Experimental results using holograms of spherical and non-spherical particles demonstrate the performance of the proposed measuring algorithm. Accepted version

Brownian diffusion of aerosol particles was studied in microgravity conditions using a digital holographic velocimeter. Based on digital image processing, the observed volume, recorded on a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, is reconstructed slice by slice in order to achieve a full focused volume. Three dimensional coordinates of the particles are retrieved by such procedures and particle trajectories are reconstructed by analysing the sequence of the particle position. We deduced that the displacement of particles in microgravity, due to Brownian motion, follows a Gaussian distribution, like at 1 g. Particle sizes obtained from SEM measurements were in good agreement with those calculated from the three dimensional trajectories provided by the holographic microscope. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Digital in-line holography provides simultaneous particle size and three-dimensional position measurements. In general, the measurement accuracy varies locally, and tends to decrease where particles are closely spaced, due to noise resulting from diffraction by adjacent particles. Aggravating the situation is the identification of transversely adjoining particles as a single particle, which introduces significant errors in both size and position measurements. Here, we develop a refinement procedure that distinguishes such erroneous particles from accurately detected ones and further separates individual particles. Effectiveness of the refinement is characterized using simulations, experimental holograms of calibration fields, and a few practical applications to liquid breakup. Significant improvements in the accuracy of the measured particle sizes, positions, and displacements confirm the usefulness of the proposed method.

The 3D distribution of a particle field by digital holography is obtained by 3D numerical reconstruction of a 2D hologram. The proper identification of particles from the background during numerical reconstruction influences the overall effectiveness of the technique. The selection of a suitable threshold value to segment particles from the background of reconstructed images during 3D holographic reconstruction process is a critical issue, which influences the accuracy of particle size and number density of reconstructed particles. The object particle field parameters, such as depth of sample volume and density of object particles, influence the optimal threshold value. The present study proposes a novel technique for the determination of the optimal threshold value of a reconstructed image. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is demonstrated using both simulated and experimental data. The proposed technique is robust to variation in optical properties of particle and background, depth of sample volume, and number density of object particle field. The particle diameter obtained from the proposed threshold technique is within 5% of that obtained from the particle size analyzer. There is a maximum ten times increase in reconstruction effectiveness by using the proposed automatic threshold technique in comparison with the fixed manual threshold technique.

The digital holography has immense potential related to many applications of science and engineering. It has many advantages compared to conventional holography i.e. characterization of online dynamic phenomena and imaging in small scale microscopic systems. However, its primary limitation is the size of sensors and number of sensors compared to the conventional holographic plate. The critical issue of digital holography is the numerical reconstruction procedure. The present study proposes a new reconstruction algorithm known as 'Within Depth Intensity Averaging (WDIA)'. The effectiveness of the WDIA algorithm is demonstrated using both experiment and simulation for single particle, 2D and 3D distribution of particles. The 3D distribution of particles is experimentally simulated by using gelatin film on the glass slide. The particle images from digital holography compare well with that of microscopic images demonstrating the success of the proposed algorithm compared to the existing reconstruction procedure. The depth error significantly reduces (maximum 100%) and particles of any size can be characterized by the WDIA reconstruction algorithm contrary to the existing reconstruction algorithm available in literature. The effect of particle number density, particle size and sample volume depth on reconstruction effectiveness using the WDIA algorithm has been investigated and compared with the literature demonstrating its superiority in performance.

The holographic microscopy technique is a strong contender for dynamic three-dimensional (3D) measurement of small particles (typically smaller than 5 microm) in microchannels. However, there is a big challenge to accurately measure the size of such small particles. The traditional hologram reconstruction method was numerically investigated. It is found that the error level, especially for the size measurement, is higher than expected, even in an ideal situation without consideration of noise. An alternative way based on Lorenz-Mie (LM) calculations was then presented. The intensity distribution of the fringe pattern on the particle hologram is directly used and compared with the ones calculated using an LM-based program. Various cases for particle sizes from 0.5 to 5 microm and recording distances from 5 to 500 microm are tested. The results show that the accuracy in particle sizing can be significantly improved.

The inability to distinguish between particle images and noise in holographic reconstruction of dense particle fields hampers the advancement of holographic particle diagnostic techniques including holographic particle image velocimetry. We developed a method to separate particles from the noise by unlocking a unique particle signature in the complex reconstructed field. This complex-wave signature is present in digital particle holograms recorded at any scattering angle. Simulations of single and multiple particle holograms, as well as preliminary laboratory particle-field experiments, not only demonstrated the existence of the particle signature but also evaluated its ability to remove noise. Regardless of particle seeding density, scattering angle of hologram recording and particle size range, the particle identification/validation routine consistently provides50% removal of "bad" particles and8% of good particles.