Invited Speakers

Kevin Harding

Kevin Harding
Optical Metrology Leader
GE Global Research

Kevin Harding is a Principle Scientist and Technology Leader of Optical Metrology at GE Global Research in NY. With over 30 years of experience in the field, he has contributed over 120 papers, 35 patents, and 5 book chapters in the field. He has been recognized for his work by the Automated Imaging Association Leadership Award, the SME Eli Whitney Award, and Outstanding Engineering Award. Kevin is a Fellow of SPIE and the 2008 President of the Society

Title: “Hardware Based Error compensation in 3D Optical Metrology Systems”

Laser Metrology as a tool for 3D measurements is seeing increased use in industrial applications. With advances is computer processing power, there have been many publications on new algorithms to correct distortions, speckle and other problems affecting the errors in such systems. But there have also been many advances in the hardware tools, including specialty lenses, light sources, and feedback systems that offer many initial corrections than can be employed before any computer analysis is even attempted. This paper will discuss the tradeoff of hardware and software corrections, the primary sources of hardware based errors, and new methods to realize these corrections in the hardware.

Francois Polak

Francois Polak
Synchrotron Soleil

Francois Polack has a 20 years experience in synchrotron X-ray optics and beamline construction. From 1993 to 2002 he was in charge of optics and beamline developments at LURE (Orsay), the French national synchrotron source near Paris, where he set-up a first metrology laboratory. In 2002 he was appointed as head of the Optics group of SOLEIL, the new synchrotron source which has now followed on LURE. He supervises the optical design and conception of Soleil new beamlines , and the activities of the optical metrology laboratory.

Title: “Characterization of optical surfaces for the present generations of synchrotron sources ”

Generalization of specific optical metrology and systematic testing of all delivered components has yield in the last decade to a significant improvement of the optical surfaces installed on synchrotron radiation (SR) beamlines around the world. Surface roughness is classically characterized by phase-shift microinterferometers, sometimes AFM. Long trace profiler (LTP)1, which measures the local slope along a line profile, has been the choice instrument to measure figure errors of large size components. Present LTPs have an accuracy around 0.2 µrad RMS, and a spatial resolution around 1 mm, but they cannot provide 2D measurement nor access the small radii that modern sagitally focusing SR optics calls for. Stiching interferometry or Shack-Hartmann methods are good candidate for 2D measurement of figure errors. Moreover the old distinction between figure and finish (or roughness) errors characterized by two RMS values appears oversimplified. The properties of an optical surface are better represented by the power spectrum of the surface errors, the range of significant spatial frequencies depending on the actual use of the surface. Hence, improving SR optics performances will be only made possible by the conjunction of improved polishing techniques and a panel of measuring methods adapted to different spatial frequency that still are to be developed.

Toru Yoshizawa

Toru Yoshizawa
Saitama Medical University

Toru Yoshizawa received his BS, MS and Doctor of Engineering degrees in precision engineering from the University of Tokyo. After 10 years of research and educational work at Yamanashi University, he moved to the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, where he was professor in the Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering for 25 years. After retirement from this university, he worked in industry for three years and again moved to the Saitama Medical University to initiate the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Currently he is professor in this department of the Saitama Medical University and Professor Emeritus at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology. He served as SPIE Japan Chapter Chair for 10 years and is a fellow of SPIE.

Title: Banknote verification using optical techniques

Today, in the high-technology world, one of the crucial social problems is counterfeiting of currency. The situation is the same with a high-tech countriy such as Japan. Counterfeit currency of all kinds of notes found in 1998 was 807, but more than 20,000 notes were detedcted in 2002, and 25,000 notes in 2004. This means total amount of detected banknotes increased 32 times during these six years. The main reason is attributed to the rapid widespread use of color copying and printing machines. At the same time, the fact that vending machines and bill validators are too popular in Japan caused this result. Consequently, the Bank of Japan issued the three new bank notes in November 2004. Some of the former features were 1) Watermark, 2) Ultrafine-line printing, 3) Intaglio printing, 4) Microprinting, 5) Luminescent ink. In addition, the following security features have been added:1) Hologram, 2) Watermark-bar-pattern, 3) Latent image, 4) Pearl ink, 5) Luminescent ink, 6) Intaglio printing. Because of newly incorporated techniques, the amount of forged bills of new type notes seems to have reduced. Most of the false notes found recently are old type of notes still in circulation. However, measures have to be taken to meet the demand for discrimination of a legitimate bill from a fake because forging techniques are becoming more skillful. Moreover, most of false notes are found in the vending machines or bill validators for drinks and game machines such as “Pachinko” which are counted to be more than 5.5 million in Japan. To cope with the situation, a project team was set up two years ago by members from two universities, an institure and an industrial company. This team succeeded in developing sensors for checking hologram pattern, fluorescence of ink, microprinting pattern, and watermark. One group focused on checking the microprinting. Microprinting technique has been adopted to draw a portrait on the front surface using fine and thin lines. When the reference pattern is overlapped on the note, distinct moire pattern is produced, whereas, in the case of a copied note, blurred poor pattern appears. Another group weighed three-dimensional information as well as two-dimensional pattern. In printing banknotes higher technique such as intaglio printing has been used. In this case, the ink is raised much higher than by conventional anastatic printing. Such high raise is impossible to duplicate or produce by using letter press, an office printer or a copying machine. To detect this raising of ink, they applied newly improved structured-light-method which has been used in industrial applications to car industry and/or semiconductor industry for measurement of 3D profile of bodies, dies, bumps, etc. The proto-type apparatus incorporating these detection principles is now undertesting, and a bill validator equipped with new sensors is expected to be commercialized.