Design of a High-speed and High-precision Hybrid Scanner with a New Path Planning Strategy Based on Spatial Entropy

In this paper, we design a scanning system and develop a cooperative scanning strategy for the homemade hybrid scanning microscope, by which the high-precision image with high scanning speed is achieved. Hybrid scanning microscope integrated with an Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) and a Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope (CLSM) is widely used in the measurement. The CLSM is a fast-response but low-imaging quality appliance. On the other side, AFM is a low-imaging speed instrument but with high-resolution. Thus, we aimed to design a new scanning system and a new strategy to achieve high-speed and high-precision image simultaneously. First, we obtain a coarse 3D image by the CLSM. Then, based on calculating the spatial entropy of CLSM image, we define regions of interest (ROI) in AFM for fine scanning. Finally, we integrate the scanning results from CLSM and AFM to obtain a composite image. As a result, the experimental results show that approximately 57% of the total scanning time (AFM+CLSM) is reduced compared to the regular hybrid scanner, while the resolution is still kept up to 71 nm, which is very slightly inferior to the traditional AFM.