Better three-dimensional inspection with structured illumination: speed.

Three-dimensional (3D) inspection in the factory requires precision and speed. While customers can select from a wide spectrum of high-precision sensors, the real challenge today is “speed.” We discuss the speed of 3D sensors in a general context to provide an understanding of why high-resolution 3D sensors deliver significantly fewer 3D points per second than the available camera pixel rates suggest. The major cause of low speed is the large number E of required exposures due to the unavoidable depth scanning. Through the example of structured-illumination microscopy (SIM), we demonstrate how E can be minimized without reducing precision. We further demonstrate a lateral scanning strategy that operates at a significantly higher speed for macroscopic measurements by avoiding explicit depth scanning. This paper is a follow up on an earlier paper about the precision limits of SIM and exploits the earlier results.