Automated Microscopy an overview driven by application. Technical Report IES-2014-01

In this report, the task of automating microscopic inspection techniques in an industrial environment is considered. Approaches are presented, that adapt these techniques for quality assurance (QA) while focusing on integration into already existing industrial processes. The specific limitations of microscopic image acquisition, such as an extremely narrow depth of field, exhibit particular challenges for operating microscopes in an automated way. This image acquisition is the basis of an industrial scale image analysis with decent quality. A subset of possible solutions to selected requirements are discussed. This report suggests novel ways of exploiting microscopic measurements while using multi-sensor fusion as an example to construct a model for 3D estimation by combining 2.5D measurement data and pre-acquired ground-truth a priori data.