Fast and accurate metrology of multi-layered ceramic materials by an automated boundary detection algorithm developed for optical coherence tomography data.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) is useful for materials defect analysis and inspection with the additional possibility of quantitative dimensional metrology. Here, we present an automated image-processing algorithm for OCT analysis of roll-to-roll multilayers in 3D manufacturing of advanced ceramics. It has the advantage of avoiding filtering and preset modeling, and will, thus, introduce a simplification. The algorithm is validated for its capability of measuring the thickness of ceramic layers, extracting the boundaries of embedded features with irregular shapes, and detecting the geometric deformations. The accuracy of the algorithm is very high, and the reliability is better than 1 μm when evaluating with the OCT images using the same gauge block step height reference. The method may be suitable for industrial applications to the rapid inspection of manufactured samples with high accuracy and robustness.