Cross-scale image registration based on geometric feature similarity evaluation for atomic force microscope and optical microscope
WU Yi-nan
FANG Yong-chun
FAN Zhi
WANG Chao
LIU Cun-huan
HU Zi-qi
Abstract：An atomic force microscope (AFM) is able to overcome the limitation of its own imaging range while ensuring high imaging accuracy with the assistance of an optical microscope (OM). However, it is difficult and necessary to realize accurate positioning of AFM images in optical field of view by linkage control between an AFM and an OM, and the key to solving this issue is to achieve AFM and OM image registration. Therefore, in this paper, a geometric feature similarity evaluation based cross-scale image registration algorithm is proposed for AFM and OM imaging, which provides the basis for further precise positioning and imaging in the AFM and OM confocal system. To be specific, to facilitate accurate image registration, the ratio between AFM and OM imaging scales is first calibrated by utilizing a known size pattern imprinted by an AFM probe, which is then applied as a priori knowledge for image registration. Furthermore, an advanced image processing algorithm is designed to extract the geometric feature for AFM and OM images, which are stored as inner angle vectors and side length vectors. Moreover, based on the calibrated scale ratio and the geometric feature, a novel similarity evaluation function is proposed to achieve cross-scale image registration with high accuracy. Experiments and analysis of different imprinted geometries are implemented to demonstrate the good performance of the proposed method.
Keywords：atomic force microscopeoptical microscopegeometric featuresimilarity evaluationimage registration
Publication Date：2020-09-28
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：10( 1913-1922 )