Laser Beam Profiler

   The LASER BEAM PROFILER measures the spatial distribution of light from laser, LED and fiber optic sources. These systems use standard RS-170 and CCIR cameras to capture beam images and the video signal is digitized with a framegrabber, either a PCI or PC Card. The result is a live false color display of beam intensity along with key beam dimensional measurements.

   The software displays the data in four panes: The left three panes contain user selected data for XY profiles, 3D plot and bean statistics. The latter reverts to a tabular data display when an array of images is captured. The user selects data types by simply clicking and dropping one of the “Hot Buttons” into the resizeable data pane. This allows the user to optimize the screen display to emphasize particular data. Part or all of the screen can be printed or saved to the Windows clipboard for transfer to other programs.

   Data is easily dimensionally calibrated to allow use of a lens or microscope for large or small beams from inches to microns in size. For pulsed lasers a flash detection trigger is used that allows the user to set a threshold for pulse detection. Individual or sequential, measurement, locating the plot at the centroid, background subtraction, adjustment of DC camera offset, image enlargement, smoothing, addition of text notes and averaging are included in the software.

    When a timed series of beam images has been captured the data table automatically switches to a tabular display of the time, diameter, total intensity, peak intensity (and location) and the centroid location. This data is useful to determine how a beam changes over time. Time scales as short as several hundred milliseconds or as hours can be easily observed in real time and the data log automatically prepared. The tabular data can be exported as an ASC-2 file for further spreadsheet analysis.