Development of a low-cost profile scanner using DVD pickup head and CCD image sensor

This paper provides a new method of using precise and low-cost measurement apparatus for profile scanning of micron scale surfaces and optimistically will be of great use in bio medical engineering applications. The main part of this instrument is an optical pickup head used in DVD drivers consisting of a laser diode source and some optical components gathering in a package together. The most essential novelty of the paper is combination of a CCD image sensor with DVD pickup head instead of photo-detector IC, so it provides us with precise images of the light reflected by the micron scale surfaces. By the way in spite of most of previous studies there's no need to have a perfectly polished samples to have appropriate scanning process. That's all because of high sensitive characteristic of CCD sensors so it's possible to take images even with the least amount of reflected light. Followed by image processing methods desirable information about surface profile is obtained. A calibration curve is resulted by calibration test that creates the last level measuring information of surface profile. The experimental results were compared with SEM images of the sample and a reasonable agreement was observed.