Pixel shader based real-time image processing for surface metrology

Optical systems for surface contour and deformation measurement in quality assurance require short measurement times. Standard CCD or CMOS cameras with high resolution can provide up to 20 frames per second or more. In the area of surface metrology, the major time consuming bottleneck is the step of signal processing. This bottleneck can be significantly reduced by executing the image processing algorithms in a standard PC graphic hardware - up to now mainly used for computer games. This paper shows how, and up to which degree, image processing algorithms are transferable to graphic hardware and the considerable benefits of this new technique. The described methods and results are also transferable to other measurement technologies requiring high speed image processing.