This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase-II project is aimed at building a working three-dimensional microscope for industrial applications. This patented optics using holography will be grafted onto a two- dimensional inspection microscope now sold into the thread spinneret manufacturing industry. This research will seek to demonstrate that the expensive holographic master used in Phase I can be inexpensively mass replicated. Optical microscopy has almost always used refractive primary objectives, and 3D versions of classical refractive microscopes exploit the methods of triangulation, confocal focus accommodation, or interferometry. Here, a new concept into the technology of optical microscopy, primary objective gratings, is introduced. We have demonstrated that if an objective grating is fabricated using holography and is then configured at grazing incidence, it can be used as 3D profilometer. The demonstration microscope will be designed with features to show that it can be sold into the electronics surface mount technology inspection industry, a larger market than spinneret inspection.
This project will demonstrate the 3D capability to inspect solder paste and component insertions of sample circuit boards, and therefore will impact industrial inspection, and will provide robust field units for geology, archeology, anthropology, and paleontology. In medicine, this method has utility in endoscopy, and uses in surgery and dentistry is also foreseen. Generalized biological scientists will also be end users with the introduction of computer image processing, the availability of 3D profiles greatly expedites characterization and pattern recognition, because 3D data is immune to variations in surface shading typical of 2D image processing.
3DeWitt Reinvents Holography Despite some science fiction forecasts, two-dimensional photography was never replaced or even challenged by holography during the 50 years since the very first hologram was made in 1962. Now 3DeWitt, a small start-up company in upstate New York, has invented a practical 3D holographic technology that approaches the problem differently. Rather than make one hologram for each image, the patented method used by 3DeWitt is based on making a single "vanilla" hologram for all images and seeing the world through that hologram. Although to human eyes, the images are merely 2D "slices" of space, computer software can assemble 3D images using a process of mathematical analysis. 3DeWitt's holographic method has been developed under National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grants that equipped the small firm with the capability to make holographic optical elements, the key component in this new 3D process. 3DeWitt can now make these specialty components to specification for a variety of applications. The most recent research project was centered on a new type of 3D microscope useful for industrial inspection. A demonstration microscope was built, tested and disclosed to the public in 2009. It was selected for special coverage by the International Society for Optics and Photonics in their on-line SPIE Newsroom. During the course of development under the NSF SBIR grant, the microscope's sensitivity to light was increased by twenty fold, and this method to increase sensitivity received a patent in 2013 at the conclusion of the NSF SBIR project. The holography behind the 3D microscope has many uses. One example with immediate commercial potential is a 3D human/computer interface that can supersede the common 2D computer mouse and/or touchpad. The user wears a ring on the index finger that is tracked in 3D by a computer using 3DeWitt's patented holographic optics. The hologram is an inexpensive replica in plastic which is virtually without cost, creating a commercial opportunity. Licenses to the patent - not the pieces of plastic - are the principal point of trade. The ring also can send encoded information to the computer to identify the user in multi-user situations or for commercial transactions, another characteristic of the product that may invite investment of capital in the small company. To demonstrate the 3D input method, a cell phone was modified using the same holographic optical element as 3DeWitt's 3D microscope. The 3D Ring (www.3dewitt.com) was shown to the public for the first time at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) where it attracted crowds. After CES, relationships have been started with consumer electronics companies that are looking beyond 2D operating systems and 2D graphics to the intrinsic capabilities of computers to render images in 3D. CES also led to contacts with industrial companies for their inspection and robotic applications.
