초록 ▼

A method and an apparatus are provided for automatically determining an area-related cell density of a cell structure of a honeycomb body having a plurality of passages that are open-ended at an end of the honeycomb body at which the cell structure is visible. An image which has a known or ascertain

A method and an apparatus are provided for automatically determining an area-related cell density of a cell structure of a honeycomb body having a plurality of passages that are open-ended at an end of the honeycomb body at which the cell structure is visible. An image which has a known or ascertainable image scale of at least a portion of the cell structure is recorded with an optical instrument and the image is processed. In the image processing operation the number of cells is established by counting cells and the cell density is calculated by relating the number of cells to a reference area established through the use of the image scale. The cell density can be rapidly and accurately determined in such a way particularly when using computer-aided image processing. Therefore, production errors can be quickly detected and costs can be saved in that manner.

대표청구항 ▼

A method and an apparatus are provided for automatically determining an area-related cell density of a cell structure of a honeycomb body having a plurality of passages that are open-ended at an end of the honeycomb body at which the cell structure is visible. An image which has a known or ascertain

A method and an apparatus are provided for automatically determining an area-related cell density of a cell structure of a honeycomb body having a plurality of passages that are open-ended at an end of the honeycomb body at which the cell structure is visible. An image which has a known or ascertainable image scale of at least a portion of the cell structure is recorded with an optical instrument and the image is processed. In the image processing operation the number of cells is established by counting cells and the cell density is calculated by relating the number of cells to a reference area established through the use of the image scale. The cell density can be rapidly and accurately determined in such a way particularly when using computer-aided image processing. Therefore, production errors can be quickly detected and costs can be saved in that manner. fy the fluorescence of the contact and determine the concentration of the substance mixed with the fluorophor, using fluorescence intensity, illumination intensity and integration time on the image acquisition means. 2. System in accordance with claim 1, characterised in that the illumination means comprise a ring illumination source (11) which emits the first beam and a laser source (13) which emits the second beam. 3. System according to claim 2, characterised in that the laser is a micro laser. 4. System in accordance with claim 3, characterised in that the micro laser is a pulsated micro laser. 5. System in accordance with claim 1, characterised in that the image acquisition means comprise a cooled CCD camera, a colour filter placed in front of said camera and an electronic circuit ensuring the piloting of the camera and illumination means. 6. System according to claim 5, characterised in the colour filter is a high-pass filter. 7. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the image acquisition means comprise a photo multiplier associated with an acquisition circuit, a colour filter placed in front of said photo multiplier and an electronic circuit ensuring the piloting of the camera and illumination means. 8. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the microscope is fitted with a dichroic filter (3). 9. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the microscope operates by epi-illumination. 10. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the deflector means consist of an acoustic optical deflector deflecting the second beam in two orthogonal directions X and Y. 11. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the matrix is an electrically addressable matrix. 12. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the substance is made up of DNA strands hybridised to probes made from synthetic DNA. 13. System according to claim 12, characterised in that the DNA probes are strongly attached to the contacts using polypyrrol. 14. System according to claim 1, characterised in that the fluorophor is chosen from among the following products: phycoeryithrine, C-Snarf or sulphorhodamine. 15. System according to claim 1, which forms a small-sized reading box, characterised in that the matrix of contacts is carried by a card of chip card type. 16. Method for implementing the system according to claim 1, characterised in that it consists of: a calibration step (20) of the system with positioning and blocking of the matrix under the optical axis of the microscope objective, focusing the image acquisition means, and automatic search of a reference contact in relation to the optical centre of the system; an image acquisition step (30) of one contact of the matrix; and a calculation step (40) to calculate the fluorescence of said contact then deducting the concentration of the substance. 17. Method according to claim 16, in which image acquisition is made with a cooled CCD camera, characterised in that it comprises, between the calibration and acquisition steps, a scanning step in which the contact under consideration is scanned point by point.