Optical techniques for shape measurements

Optical methods are becoming interesting tools for high resolution surface topography measurements. Micro- and macrostructure measurement techniques were developed to measure the surface topography, resolutions of one micrometer or better can be obtained. The progress made in the last few years is due to the development of laser and solid state detector elements together with very powerful computer support for the processing of information. Methods for optical shape measurements together with future trends and some limitations will be discussed.