<title>Three-dimensional reconstruction of ocean chlorophyll distributions from underwater serial sectioned fluorescence images</title>

Abstract

An underwater optical serial sectioning system has been developed to measure in-situ three- dimensional distributions of biological particles. The technique involves scanning a thin plane of laser light sequentially through a range of distances parallel to the imaging plane of a digital CCD camera. Images of induced fluorescence in the sequentially illuminated planes are recorded. A computer based inverse program is then used to reconstruct three-dimensional chlorophyll (alpha) distributions from the plane images. The inverse method compensates for attenuation of the fluorescence excitation and emission throughout the volume and converts camera image plane intensity values to mg Chl (alpha) /m3. Graphic display of the composite data set with spatial resolution of 1 cm3 in a 20 X 20 X 20 cm volume is presented in a three-dimensional rendered volume. Chl (alpha) concentration discrimination of 0.1 mg Chl (alpha) /m3 over the range of 0.1 to 2.0 mg Chl (alpha) /m3 has been demonstrated in the laboratory with the optical serial sectioning system.© (1994) COPYRIGHT SPIE--The International Society for Optical Engineering. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.