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PLANAR LASER ILLUMINATION AND IMAGING (PLIIM) DEVICE EMPLOYING A LINEAR IMAGE DETECTION ARRAY HAVING VERTICALLY-ELONGATED IMAGE DETECTION ELEMENTS, WHEREIN THE HEIGHT OF THE VERTICALLY-ELONGATED IMAGE DETECTION ELEMENTS AND THE F/# PARAMETER OF THE IMAGE FORMATION OPTICS ARE CONFIGURED TO REDUCE SPECKLE-PATTERN NOISE POWER THROUGH SPATIAL-AVERAGING OF DETECTED SPECKLE-NOISE PATTERNS

  • US 6,997,386 B2
  • Filed: 03/21/2002
  • Issued: 02/14/2006
  • Est. Priority Date: 06/07/1999
  • Status: Expired due to Fees
First Claim
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1. A hand-supportable linear-type laser illumination and imaging (PLIIM) based device comprising:

  • a hand-supportable housing having a light transmission window;

    a linear image formation and detection (IFD) module characterized by an F/# parameter, mounted within said hand-supportable housing, and having a linear image detection array with vertically elongated image detection elements and image formation optics having a field of view (FOV) projected through said tight transmission window into an illumination and imaging field external to said hand-supportable housing and in which an object is presented for illumination and imaging, each said vertically-elongated image detection element having a height dimension (H) that is greater than the width dimension (W) thereof; and

    a laser illumination mechanism, mounted within said hand-supportable housing, for producing a laser illumination beam of substantially planar geometry, arranged in a coplanar relationship with a portion of said FOV;

    wherein, for a given wavelength or laser illumination, the height dimension (H) of each said image detection element is selected to provide the largest possible spatial averaging area, while the F/# parameter of said linear IFD module is selected to provide the smallest possible average speckle noise pattern size along the height dimension of said vertically-elongated image detection elements so that more individual speckle noise patterns can occur along the height dimension of each said vertically-elongated image detection element in said linear IFD module;

    whereby a series of linear images of said object are sequentially detected by said linear IFD module as said object moves past said hand-supportable housing, so that said series of linear images can be grabbed and buffered for subsequent use in constructing two-dimensional images of said object; and

    wherein the level of speckle noise power observed at said linear image detection array is reduced through the spatial averaging of said individual speckle noise patterns occurring along the height dimension of said image detection elements.

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