Good evening,

some dentists and the engineer in chief of our local mechnical workshop
once had asked me to measure the depth and volume of holes generated in a
piece of titanium by bombardement with microscopically small Teflon balls
that were shot onto the surface in a jet of compressed air. As far as I
understood, the background of this was that they wanted to find out
something for implantates.
I tried with reflective CSLM but it turned out to not work. The reason was
that the ratio of depth and diameters of the craters was simply too large
for the laser beam emitting from a high NA lens to penetrate to the bottom
of the craters. Low NA lenses would allow for that but their axial
resolution was much too bad for the measurement.
However, if you are thinking of flat, lengthy grooves or "large valleys" it
should be possible to estimate the volume by means of reflective CSLM.
Alternatively, one could fill the craters with fluorescent solution and go
for fluorescence microscopy, but resolution will be much worse.

Best wishes
Johannes

At 11:39 06.06.2002 -0400, you wrote:
>Has anyone ever used confocal microscopy to measure the volume of pits in
>a metal surface?  I have tried reflective measurements, but can't tell
>where the pit begins or ends.  I know its a long shot but I figure if
>anyone knows, it will be this group.
>
>****************************************************************************
>         Elaine Kunze
>         Flow Cytometry.....Image Analysis...
>         Life Sciences Consortium
>         http://www.lsc.psu.edu/stf/cqca/home.html
>         8B Althouse Laboratory  (814-863-2762)
>         Penn State University
>         University Park, PA 16802

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Paul Johannes Helm, M.Sc., Ph.D.

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                         Institute of Basic Medical Sciences
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