Detection of micro-sized air bubble defects in optical glass based on Mie theory

Mie scattering theory was shown in this paper to be suitable for analyzing the forward scattered light intensity distribution of micro-sized air bubble defects in glass, shining by a monochrome laser with a wavelength of 532um. The scattered light was measured by a high definition CCD camera. The scattering process can be classified as uncorrelated single scattering according to the properties of optical media. After calculating and smoothing the gray value of split rings of picture, Chahine algorithm was applied to reverse the size of defects. This technique was accurate to within 5% for defects with radii of <50um.