379

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

Size Measurement of Very Small Spherical Particles

by Mie Scattering Imaging (MSI)
Arne Gramann*, Franz Peters**
(Received: 16 October 2003; in revised form: 21 July 2004; accepted: 20 October 2004)

Abstract
The Mie Scattering Imaging method (MSI) gathers outof-focus images of dispersed spherical particles present
in a laser light sheet and extracts the individual particle
diameter from these images. The general idea of the
method has been around for more than a decade and a
number of papers has dealt with it over recent years.
Our work focuses on small particle sizes from 20 mm
down to 2 mm, a range which has not been tackled so far
although it is of great importance in particle systems.

We present an optical set-up with a special arrangement of camera lenses that allows to work in this range.
An evaluation algorithm based on correlation of the
experimental optical information with theoretical Mie
scattering was found to give the most accurate results
for particle sizing. Besides accuracy measurements on
solid spheres the versatility of the method is demonstrated by an example of transient droplet growth
between 2 7 mm.

Keywords: Mie scattering, out-of-focus imaging, particle sizing, small particles

1 Introduction
When a plane light wave interacts with a small spherical
particle light waves are scattered in all radial directions.
The properties of the scattered waves in space and time
can be predicted analytically, as originally demonstrated
at length by Mie in 1908 [1]. Due to extensive numerical
calculations required for the evaluation of Mie!s theory,
its widespread application has evolved only with the
availability of the modern computer in the 1980s.
Obviously, at the same time monochromatic laser
sources providing plane waves of sufficient intensity
came onto the market, together with a variety of
photodetectors to receive and enhance the scattered
light.
An early attempt to infer the size of a single droplet from
the scattered light pattern was made by Bartholdi et al.
[2] using a circular array of photodiodes. Over the years
the method has been refined by various groups as Knig
et al. [3], Hesselbacher et al. [4], Roth et al. [5], Steiner
et al. [6] and Rheims et al. [7]. These single droplet
*
**

A. Gramann, Siemens AG, Department S 32 M2 Thermodynamics and Blading, Rheinstrae 100, 45478 M#lheim
(Germany).
Prof. Dr.-Ing. F. Peters, Strmungslehre, Ruhr-Universit$t
Bochum, 44780 Bochum (Germany).
E-mail: peters@lstm.rub.de

" 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

studies are confined to the laboratory. In real ensembles

such as sprays and clouds, droplet size and velocity
distributions are ubiquitous. In order to get information
on individual droplets in an ensemble, a short exposure
image of the ensemble has to be taken using a laser and a
digital camera and the frozen information has to be postprocessed and evaluated. Ragucci et al. [8] were the first
to suggest such a method. Various names have been
created for the method including Mie Scattering Imaging by Massoli and Calabria [9], Interferometric Laser
Imaging for Droplet Sizing by Glover et al. [10] and
Maeda et al. [11], Mie Scattering Interferometry by
Mounaim-Rousselle and Pajot [12] or Interferometric
Particle Imaging and Global Phase Doppler by
Damaschke et al. [13] and Albrecht et al. [14]. We found
Mie Scattering Imaging (MSI) most appropriate and
tend to stick to this name.
The basis of the method is a short exposure, out-of-focus
image of droplets present in a laser sheet. The out-offocus image plane receives an image of the aperture
involved (every camera lens has an aperture) which is
usually a circle of a diameter depending on the geometry
of the optical system. Within the aperture image
scattered light according to Mie theory is received which
appears in terms of interference fringes. The fringes
disappear when the image plane is moved to its in-focus
position. It is understood that the out-of-focus position is
DOI: 10.1002/ppsc.200400894

380
in the far field, which means that the fringe pattern is
independent of the distance. This condition is easily
satisfied for small droplets. For bigger ones transition
regimes with varying patterns appear [13]. The fringes
contain information on the droplet diameter and the
refractive index in terms of fringe spacing and position. It
will be shown how to extract the diameter information
with the highest possible accuracy.
It should be noted that the method is restricted to
spherical droplets. Yet, as small droplets tend to be
spherical due to the action of the surface tension the
method is expected to work better for small droplets than
for big ones. Another restriction is droplet distance
which, when too small, leads to overlapping of the
aperture images or fringe patterns, which cannot yet be
interpreted. While these restrictions limit the range of
applicability they do not introduce additional errors
because the evaluation relies on not overlapping images.
We start with an explanation of those properties of the
scattered light that are exploited for MSI. Section 3 deals
with the optical set-up and its detailed geometry, which is
the basis for the image evaluation treated in section 4.
Then, section 5 presents accuracy measurements providing quantitative information about what to expect from
the method. Section 6 is to show the capability of the
method in case of very fine droplets growing in a
transient process.

2 The Exploited Properties of the Scattered Light

This work refers to the scattering situation as sketched in
Figure 1. A plane laser light wave of wavelength l and
fixed direction of polarization (say the vertical) illuminates a spherical droplet or particle of refractive index n
and diameter d. Scattered light can be observed all
around the particle. A particular observation direction is
determined by two angles. The angle y and the propagation axis of the beam determine the plane of the
observer relative to the vertical. When the observer
moves around the droplet in this plane his position is

Fig. 1: Scattering geometry of laser, particle and observer.

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

given by the angle f, that measures zero in forward and

908 in sideward direction. In order to receive any light at
all the observer needs an observation window of finite
size about the observation direction which can be
expressed in ranges of y and f.
For this situation the scattered intensity can be calculated
according to Mie!s equations [1]. Bohren and Huffmann
[15] is of great help in explaining the theory. For actual
calculations one should consult the internet for commercial and free codes [16].
The first important fact is that the intensity distribution
over y (at fixed f) contains relatively low characteristic
modulation compared to the intensity distribution over f
(at fixed y). Therefore, the observation plane will
normally be fixed to a certain angle y. We prefer the
horizontal plane (y 908) for two reasons. Firstly,
positioning the camera in the horizontal plane is
convenient. Secondly, the horizontal plane (y 908)
provides the strongest intensity modulation of all planes.
Furthermore, the intensity gradient with respect to y
vanishes because the horizontal plane is symmetric with
respect to the polarization axis. This means that the
intensity distribution in the observation window will be
symmetric in the y-direction about the horizontal plane.
This is advantageous for the evaluation procedure.
The intensity distribution over f in the horizontal plane
exhibits clear-cut intensity lobes (indicated in Figure 5,
bottom) which vary in amplitude and shape as function of
the diameter. Most important for the objective of
determining the droplet diameter is the fact that these
lobes show a distinctive regular pattern in forward
direction that can be exploited. The pattern in backward
direction exhibits strong irregular fragmentation which is
less useful for the size determination but lends itself to
the determination of the refractive index (Roth et al.
[5]).
Figure 2a gives an overview over the scattering pattern in
forward and sideward direction (508 1108, y 908) for
the labeled parameters in view of its value for the
determination of the diameter. The refractive index
n 1.68 refers to melamine resin, one of the materials

381

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

Fig. 3: Lobe spacing vs. diameter from Eq. (1) and from Mie
theory (points).

Fig. 2: a) Lobe position in terms of observation angle f vs.

diameter for melamine resin particles, y 908 (vertical polarization). b) Lobe position in terms of observation angle f vs.
diameter for propanol droplets, y 908 (vertical polarization).

used to perform the accuracy measurements. In generating the diagram discrete diameters were chosen and the
corresponding f for the position of a lobe, i.e. its
maximum, was calculated. Therefore, each dot indicates
a calculation. The key information conveyed by the
diagram is the following. In areas where the dots line up
nicely, evenly spaced maxima and minima can be
expected apt to be exploited for the diameter. In the
plotted case, for the given refractive index and wavelength, an observation angle between 808 and 908 seems
to be most suitable. For example, for 10 mm an observation window between 808 and 908 would produce four
lobes where the spatial frequency of these lobes corresponds to the diameter. It must be noted though that the
lobes are not exactly equally spaced such that any
method using the spacing is, in principle, approximative.
The spacing method can be supplemented by using the
exact position of the lobes as will be seen later.
The spacing between the lobes becomes wider for
smaller droplets which means that for a given observation window the limit of two lobes will be reached. At

f 858, for a window of Df 108, this limit would be

close to 5 mm. For even smaller droplets, the positions of
the lobes and the spacing between the lobes can change
abruptly with small changes in the diameter.
The diagram is very useful for an overview of the
scattering situation and for the selection of a proper
observation angle. In using the diagram one must be
aware that its entire appearance depends considerably
on l and n, as can be seen in Figure 2b calculated for
propanol droplets in comparison with Figure 2a.
Closer inspection of the relationship between fringe
spacing and diameter is required when the diameter is to
be determined from the spacing. A simple approximative
equation
d

2"l

D! "

!
n " sin!=2
cos!=2 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
1 n2 & 2 " n " cos!=2

provides the diameter d as function of the lobe spacing

Dfin radians when l, n and the observation angle f are
inserted. It seems that this formula was first given in a
fundamental paper by Glantschnig and Chen [17] who
carried out a comprehensive geometrical optics derivation for rays of the order 0 and 1 (reflection and twofold
refraction) also including diffraction terms. The curve is
plotted in Figure 3 for the labeled parameters. Here, the
observation angle is f 708 and the window angle, now
called aperture angle 2w, is 88 which means that light is
received between 668 and 748. To check the accuracy of
this approximative curve the Mie theory is plotted as
circles. Each circle represents the lobe spacing as a mean
value over the aperture angle for a given diameter. This
mean value is obtained by running an FFT over the
calculated lobes within 2w. The frequency is taken at the
maximum in the spectrum by means of a three point
Gaussian fit (see e.g. Maeda et al. [11]). The result
confirms in a quantifyable way what was also suggested
by Figure 2a, i.e. that the prediction of the diameter from

382

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

Fig. 4: Systematic diameter deviation with respect to Figure 3.

the fringe spacing deteriorates for very small diameters

while it is excellent for larger sizes.
The deviation between curve and points of Figure 3 is
presented in Figure 4 in a different way. The diameter
difference between each point and curve at constant
spacing Df is plotted in percent vs. diameter for two
different observation angles, 708 and 908, and for two
different aperture angles, 88 and 248, respectively. In
accordance with Figure 2a the 908 angle gives the better
result. Even more important is a large aperture angle
which we were able to extend to 258 in our setup. The
curves show that the deviation stays below 5% for
diameters greater than 5 mm. Below that size the deviations grow exponentially.
The principle limits of utilization of the curve (Eq. 1)
are observed in this diagram. The accuracy experiment
(Sec. 5) shall provide more information.
Thus far an explanation has been given as to how the lobe
spacing in forward direction can be exploited for the
diameter information. Especially, when the diameter
gets small it seems beneficial to include additional
information in order to reduce the uncertainty. This
additional information can be obtained from the actual
shape of the intensity signal appearing in the observation
window (aperture angle) instead of estimation from the
spacing. This means that an entire experimental signal is
compared with the Mie signal within the observation
window by a correlation method. The general idea of the
procedure can be explained from Figure 2a by an
example. Let f 908 be the observation angle with a
2w 108 observation window around it. A corresponding experimental intensity signal with its maxima and
minima is supposed to be at hand. Now, move this signal
within the 2w window along the diameter axis and find
the position where both signals show the best fit. At this
position read the diameter off the axis. This amounts to a
signal correlation technique as will be shown later.

3 Geometry of the Optical Set-up

After the scattering features have been addressed we
now proceed to explain the optical set-up which allows to
take out-of-focus images of spherial particles illuminated
by laser light. Figure 5 sketches the principle and
Figure 6 provides geometrical details.
Particles in the object plane (Figure 5, top) have in-focus
images in the image plane due to the projection of the
lens. When the object plane is moved by the distance Da
(middle), the in-focus image plane moves by Da! while
the former image plane is now out-of-focus. Shape and
size of the out-of-focus image correspond to the aperture
which, in this case, is simply the edge of the lens. The
aperture image is basically filled with what is now present
in the former object plane. That is the intensity distribution of the scattered light delineated by the aperture
angle 2w (bottom). As 2w opens a cone in f- and ydirection and since changes in y-direction are small
(Sec.2) the lobes appear stretched into the y-direction
yielding a fringe pattern (see Figure 7 and Table 1 for an
example).
Figure 6 displays the geometry in sufficient detail to
determine the exact location of the particle that corresponds to a recorded fringe pattern in the out-of-focus
plane. The location is defined in terms of the distance
from the lens a and the x- and y-distances from the optical
axis (broken center line). The formula for the distance a
a

f b 1 & e
h
b&
H

h
H

is derived from the sketched geometry. The aperture of

diameter H is now separated from the lens and placed at
the distance e. Its out-of-focus image has the diameter h
measured pixelwise by a camera. The focal length f of the

383

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

Fig. 5: Optical arrangement for in-focus and out-of-focus imaging.

Fig. 6: Detailed geometry of optical set-up relating particle position with image position and fringe position with corresponding
observation angle.

lens must be known. In case a camera lens is used it has to

be substituted by a single lens. Finally the magnification
for the sharp image needs to be determined independently.
For the x-position one derives
%
"a
#$ a
&1
xmu & 1
e
f
%
%$
:
3
x $
a0 a & f
a a
a
&
1&
f e
f
a a0 & f
Here xmu is the shift of the center of the aperture image
off the optical axis. It must not be confused with the shift
of the center of the sharp image xu in the in-focus plane
which is different. The distance a0 is simply expressed by f
and as
a0

f b 1
:
b

The y-coordinate follows accordingly such that the

position coordinates of the particle are complete.

Along with the coordinates the scattering angle is needed

for the evaluation of fringe images. The angle between
laser propagation direction and camera axis (identical to
optical axis) is the observation angle, now called fc. Note
that Figure 6 is drawn for fc 908 which is just a special
case. The actual scattering angle of any point in the fringe
image f is obtained from
! ! ' !c

where
&"
'
$
%
xmu & xu # a a0 & f
x
180(
:

!' arctan
f a & a0
e&a p
a

4 Evaluation of Aperture Images

A laser light sheet is required for the illumination of the
spherical particles. Pulsed and continuous lasers are
equally qualified for resting particles. Streaming particles require short exposures to avoid movement blur. In
this work, a continuous Argon-Ion-Laser with 514.5 nm

384
wavelength was shaped to provide sheets of 0.5 to 1 mm
thickness. According to how the sheet is generated there
is intensity profiles within and across the sheet causing
aperture images of varying brightness. This may be
inconvenient but has no effect upon the accuracy.
A PIV-camera (LaVision Flowmaster 2) controlled by
the DaVis software of LaVision is the camera of choice in
the current work. It was fitted with either the Zeiss
Makro Planar lens T*2.8/100 mm or with two Zeiss
Planar lenses T*1.4/85 mm. In the latter case the two
camera lenses are attached to eachother at their front
ends a combination we introduced [18 20] to increase
the aperture angle and named Double Planar. The
Zeiss Planar consists of a combination of lenses with an
integrated aperture. The aperture was not used. It was
left in the open position. Instead a circular stop was
placed in front of the lens. In order to apply the geometry
relations Eqs. (2 6) the camera lens needs to be reduced
to a single substitute lens. To this end the camera lens is
mounted on an optical bench together with known
objects (e.g. a grid) and all distances and the images are
surveyed. The result is the position of the substitute lens
inside the camera lens and the focal length. The aperture
angle for the first camera lens is limited to about 78, the
one for the Double Planar reaches 258, a very important
improvement in view of range and accuracy. Note that
the individual aperture angle for each particle (Figure 6)
depends on the particle position. With the substitute lens
all calculations of position and angle can be conducted.
Figure 7 shows aperture images of five droplets present
in the observation field which corresponds to the chip
area of the camera. In order to demonstrate the evaluation one image is extracted and magnified. It appears to
be a little moon shaped on one side, a problem that arises
from the special geometry of the Double Planar imaging.
Part of the image is merely cut off when it lies too far
away from the optical axis, an effect called vignetting. It

Fig. 7: Typical images of 20 mm airborne polystyrene particles.

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

suffers no distortion though. This blemish can be

corrected for by fitting a circle to the image using the
edges of the indicated vertical grey value distribution.
With the circle fixed the size h and the coordinates of the
image center xmu and ymu are obtained in terms of pixels
on the camera chip convertible into mm.
Now, the horizontal intensity profile is determined by
averaging the grey values of the vertical fringes. This
relies on the assumption that the fringes are straight
which they are on the scale of the image. In principle they
are not straight as discussed in Sec. 2. The first evaluation
of the fringe spacing is based on FFT including a Gaussfit. Our procedure follows the one described by Maeda
[11]. The result is the mean spacing Df in pixels which
converts into Df in degrees by
D!

D!pixel
2w:
hpixel

Before Df can be inserted into Eq. (1) to yield the

diameter d the individual aperture angle 2w for each
particle needs to be known. Firstly, the distance a is
calculated from Eq. (2) with the set-up quantities H, , f
and the individual h. Once a is known, the individual
aperture angle follows from (see Figure 6)
$
%
H
:
8
2w 2 arctan
2a & e
It was discussed before that the spacing Df represents a
mean value and that it should be better to apply a
correlation technique which accounts for the shape and
the angular position of the individual intensity profile
[20]. The procedure is as follows. Firstly, Mie-signals are
calculated for the range of f and d in question whereby f
changes in steps of 0.18 and d in steps of 0.01 mm. The
results are stored in a look-up table and are readily

385

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

accessible. Then, by the help of Eqs. (5,6), scattering

angles f are assigned to the intensity profile along the xaxis in the aperture image. This happens at discrete
sampling points such that the profile exists as a spline
function of f ranging from some f below the observation
angle to some f above. The experimental signal is then
compared to theoretical ones from the look-up table
until a best fit is found at some yet to be determined
diameter. Mathematically, this is a standard correlation
procedure relying on Eqs. (9 12). An important condition is that the sampling points of both signals coincide.
With the Mie signals frozen in the look-up table this can
best be achieved by interpolation in the spline fitting of
the experimental signal with subsequent reading of the
grey values right at the sampling points of the Mie signal.
The other possibility, which is recalculation of the Mie
values at the sampling points of every new experimental
signal, seems too expensive for the time beeing.
The correlation algorithm is covered by the following
equations which are discussed e.g. by Schr#fer [21]. In the
first equation kmax is the number of sampling points used
in the correlation. GMie k, d is the intensity value of the Mie
signal (normalized on the 8 bit scale) at the kth point for
! Mie is
the diameter d from which the mean signal value G
subtracted. Multiplying this value with the correspond! (grey values, 8 bit)
!k & G
ing experimental difference G
and summarizing over all sampling points yields the
covariance dd. dMie d and dG are the standard deviations of
the Mie and the experimental signal, respectively. The
correlation coefficient Cd of Eq.(12) normalizes the
covariance with the product of the standard deviations.
The to be determined diameter is found where Cd
assumes a maximum.
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u
max &1
u 1 kX
! Mie " Gk & G
!
GMie k; d & G
dd t
kmax k0
dMied

vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u
max &1
u 1 kX
! Mie 2
t
GMie k; d & G
kmax k0

10

vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u
max &1
u 1 kX
! 2
dG t
Gk & G
kmax k0

11

Cd

12

dd
:
dG " dMie d

A similar correlation technique is the minimum square

difference method (MQD) (Gui and Merzkirch [22])
which summarizes the squares of the differences between theoretical and experimental signal for a fixed

diameter and divides by the number of samples. The

result is the difference Dd
Dd

kmax &1

kmax

k0

Gk & GMie k; d 2 :

13

Dd is calculated for all d from the look-up table. The to be

determined diameter is found where the difference Dd is
smallest. This is a very simple and effective method as
will be seen.

5 Accuracy Test Experiments

So far concept and procedure of the MSI method have
been explained. In order to gather quantitative information on the accuracy of the method experiments on
particles of known refractive index and diameter are
required. The company microparticles GmbH provides spherical particles consisting of melamine resin and
polystyrene with refractive index 1.68 and 1.59, respectively. Of melamine three different diameters i.e.
2.55 mm, 5.25 mm and 11.93 mm in the lower half of the
envisaged measuring range (2 20 mm) were acquired.
To save costs the upper half was not investigated exept
for 20.5 mm polystyrene particles at the upper end.
Evidently, the lower half is the more important one
because the number of fringes drops to a limit. Once the
11.93 mm and the 20.5 mm particles give good results it
can be expected that the sizes in between pose no further
problem.
Small squared glass cuvettes were made, one for each
size. The particles were introduced into the cuvette
where they remained airborne for a while after being
blown around by a small air jet.
Illumination was provided by a 2 Watt Argon-Ion-Laser
with vertical polarization. Observation was in the
horizontal plane (y 908) by a LaVision Flowmaster 2
camera under observation angles f 708 and f 908.
The exposure time of 0.5 2 ms excluded movement blur
of the sedately floating particles. The camera was either
fitted with the already introduced Zeiss Macro Planar or
the Zeiss Double Planar lenses providing aperture angles
of 2w 78 and 2w 258, respectively. Two different
apertures were tested, a spherical one of H 20 mm and
a square one of 10 mm ) 20 mm posessing a diagonal
strut. The idea of the square aperture is twofold. One is to
cut down on the area of the aperture image in order to
reduce the probability of image overlapping when the
particle cloud is dense. The other is to ease the location of
the center position by the strut in cases of vignetted edges
or when the edges are not illuminated in between two
bright fringes.

386

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

Table 1: Typical aperture images for varying parameters.

d 2.55 mm
n 1.68
H 20 mm
f 908

d 5.25 mm
n 1.68

d 11.93 mm
n 1.68

d 20.50 mm
n 1.59

Zeiss Makro Planar: 2w 78

d 2.55 mm
n 1.68

d 5.25 mm
n 1.68

d 11.93 mm
n 1.68

d 20.50 mm
n 1.59

Zeiss Double Planar: 2w 258

H 20 mm
f 708
H 10 mm
B 20 mm
f 908

Table 2: Results for the diameter measurement on melamine

resin and polystyrene particles in % of diameters specified by
manufacturer. This table corresponds to Zeiss Makro Planar.

Table 3: Results for the diameter measurement on melamine

resin and polystyrene particles in % of diameters specified by
manufacturer. This table corresponds to Zeiss Double Planar.

method fC [8]

method fC [8]

aperture [mm]

diameter [mm]

mean

aperture [mm]

2.55 5.25 11.93 20.5

MQD
MQD
MQD
corr.
corr.
corr.
FFT
FFT
FFT

90
70
90
90
70
90
90
70
90

circular
circular
square
circular
circular
square
ciruclar
circular
square

20
20
20 ) 10
20
20
20 ) 10
20
20
20 ) 10

10.3 9.1
3.7 7.3
30
16.9
11.1 9.3
2
7
25.7 17.2
10.7 3.8
1.4 7.5
9.6 17.9

6.7 8.7
7.8 6.3
11.7 19.5
6.5 9.0
7.5 5.5
11.5 18.1
12.1 8.9
8.3 5.7
11.4 13.0

Typical aperture images taken under these circumstances are collected in Table 1. There are some eye-catching
features to be addressed before quantitative results are
presented. The Zeiss Makro Planar collects a single
fringe around 5 mm which is on the verge of evaluation.
Therefore 2.5 mm can certainly not be analyzed anymore.
Strikingly, the situation is much better with the Double
Planar camera lens. There are two clear fringes remaining for the smallest particle which means that the method
should be extendable to about 2 mm or even less. When
two fringes are left the position of the fringes becomes
very important for the correlation based methods.
Fortunately, the fringe positions are clearly detectable
so that the correlation methods should give good results.
The square apertures demonstrate the benefit of the
strut. Independent of the visibility of the side edges the
center finding just relies on the crossing point of the
middle horizontal (between top and bottom) and the
strut itself.
Table 2 (Makro Planar) and Table 3 (Double Planar)
summarize the statistical quantitative results of the

diameter [mm]

mean

2.55 5.25 11.93 20.5

MQD
MQD
MQD
corr.
corr.
corr.
FFT
FFT
FFT

90
70
90
90
70
90
90
70
90

circular
circular
square
circular
circular
square
ciruclar
circular
square

20
20
20 ) 10
20
20
20 ) 10
20
20
20 ) 10

11.2
1.9
10.4
8.8
1.2
9.2
14
12
14.3

3.7
4
1.1
3.6
4.3
2.2
0.8
0.9
0.7

2
2
3.3
2.4
2
3.4
1.1
6.1
5.7

2.9
3.6
7.3
3.1
3.4
8.4
7.2
3.6
11.3

5.0
2.9
5.5
4.5
2.7
5.8
5.8
5.7
8.0

particle measurements. Evaluation method, observation

angle and aperture are listed to the left. The four columns
headed by the diameter in mm give the standard deviation
values in % of 40 to 100 image evaluations each. The
rightmost column averages the results over the four
diameters for each method.
Despite their statistical nature the data indicate which
method is capable of what. As already presumed from
Figure 4 the Makro Planar (Table 2) fails for the smallest
diameter. The best results are obtained for the circular
aperture and an observation angle of 708. For this set all
three evaluation methods yield about 6% on average and
all are best for the smallest size. The square aperture is
clearly not as suitable. The reason is possibly diffraction
at the edges which is relatively strong when the aperture
angle is small (note bright seam at strut and edges in
Table 1).
The change to the Double Planar (Table 3) introduces
overall improvements. Measurements for 2.55 mm come
out well. The square aperture still shows no advantage in
any of the combinations. The 708 observation angle is

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

387

Fig. 9: Measured diameter of propanol droplets vs. time according to Figure 8.

Fig. 8: Time series of growing propanol droplets.

again clearly the best. Among the three methods the FFT
is comparable to the others except for small sizes. This
agrees with the general limits that were pointed out in
Figure 4.
When the question is asked for the most appropriate
combination within the spectrum of the studied possibilities the answer is clearly: Zeiss Double Planar with
spherical aperture and a 708 observation angle together
with a correlation technique.

6 Measuring Example: Growing Droplets

The accuracy study had to rely on solid spheres because
they could be provided with specified diameter and
refractive index. Application of the MSI method will
rather involve small droplets that are encountered in all
kinds of technical processes (sprays, clouds). Small
droplets tend to be transient which means that they
either disappear or grow rapidly. What happens depends
on how far the process is out of thermodynamic
equilibrium. The time scale in such processes is milliseconds. In order to show the versatility of the method
under difficult transient conditions growing propanol
droplets (n 1.4) were imaged and evaluated for their
size as function of time.
The propanol droplets are generated by homogeneous
nucleation out of the vapor phase in the carrier gas
nitrogen. We refer to Peters and Rodemann [23] for
details of the process. Of interest in the present context is

that a cloud of rapidly growing droplets can be observed

in a chamber (called pex-tube) for basically 100 ms. The
number density is of the order 104 cm&3. After that the
process reverses into evaporation which is not looked at.
The nuclei start in the molecular range with the highest
growth rate. Later in the mm range where continuous
heat and mass transfer prevails the growth rate slows
assuming a square root of time law when the surrounding
gas remains at constant state. Due to vapor depletion and
heat effects the latter condition is not satisfied which
leads to reduced growth that eventually comes to a halt
before evaporation sets in.
For illumination the mentioned Argon-Ion-Laser is
used. The imaging requires a short exposure time and a
high frame rate in order to resolve the growth process.
The Phantom V4.0 high speed camera operated at 500
frames per second gave the best results. It was fitted with
the Double Planar camera lens. The observation angle
was 908. Figure 8 shows a sample time series of frames
taken at the indicated times (after nucleation). It can
nicely be seen that the number of fringes increases from
frame to frame. The fact that the droplets hardly move
has to do with the way the droplet generation process is
conducted [23].
The images were evaluated for the diameter by the
correlation technique because very small sizes are
involved where the FFT fades. Results are collected in
Figure 9 where each circle represents an evaluation. The
droplet growth is perfectly identified in the range from
2 7 mm corresponding to 100 ms. It agrees with the
theoretical curve up to 60 ms. After that the median
values show that the curve levels off indicating the end of
growth which is not covered by the theory due to the
aforementioned thermodynamic problems. The scatter
of the points reflects the diameters present in the cloud.
Only a small part of the scatter is attributable to
inaccuracy (see Table 1).

388

Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 21 (2004) 379 389

7 Conclusion
A Mie Scattering Imaging (MSI) set-up and evaluation
procedure for the determination of small spherical
particle diameters has been developed and tested.
The main constituents of the optical set-up are a laser
sheet, a camera lens and a digital camera. It turned out
that the key to the determination of diameters down to
2 mm is a Double Planar lens consisting of two standard
camera lenses. It allows aperture angles up to 258 in
contrast to 78 for the single lens.
The optical set-up provides images of fringe patterns
containing the information on the diameter. Two methods of evaluation of these fringe patterns have been
studied. The first relies on the fringe spacing determined
by a FFT. It involves systematic errors which have been
analyzed. The second goes much further by using the
information contained in the fringe position. A correlation algorithm involving the exact geometry of the set-up
and a look-up table of calculated Mie theory has been
developed to exploit the fringe position for the diameter.
Extensive test measurements on known particles have
delivered quantitative accuracy data which result in the
conclusion that both methods, the correlation and the
FFT work well, yet only the correlation can be accepted
at the lower end of the range. Under the conditions
realized in this work the uncertainty in determining the
diameter can be expected to be less than 3%.
To prove the capability and versatility of MSI for small
particles a demanding test measurement has been added
to the accuracy study. It deals with propanol droplets
growing up to 7mm on the ms scale. The growth
characteristics were successfully resolved.
Now that the correlation technique has been established
the resultant continuation of this work is the evaluation
of the refractive index the feasibility of which has already
been highlighted [19].

8 Nomenclature
a
a!
a0
a0!
Cd
d
Dd
e

m
m
m
m
m
m

f
m
FFT

G
Gk

out-of-focus object distance

out-of-focus image distance
in-focus object distance
in-focus image distance
correlation coefficient
diameter
squared difference
distance between the aperture and the
substituted lens
focal distance
Fast Fourier Transformation
mean grey value
grey value at the point k

GMie k, d
Mie
G
H
m
h
m
hpixel
k
kmax
MSI
n
x
m
xmu m
m
xu
y
m
ymu m
Da
m
Da! m
2w
8
Df 8
Dfpixel
b
dd
dG
dMie d
f*
8
8
fc
f
8
l
m
y
8

calculated Mie intensity at the point k

mean calculated Mie intensity
aperture diameter
aperture image diameter
aperture image diameter in pixel
sampling point
maximum number of sampling points corresponding to 2w
Mie Scattering Imaging
refractive index
x-position of the particle
center of the aperture image, x-coordinate
x-position within the aperture image leading to the angle f*
y-position of the particle
center of the aperture image, y-coordinate
out-of-focus distance, object
out-of-focus distance, image
aperture angle
lobe/fringe spacing
fringe spacing in pixel
magnification
covariance
standard deviation measured signal
standard deviation Mie signal
angle, Eq. (6)
camera angle
observation angle
wavelength
polarisation angle

9 Acknowledgement
Technical support of this work by LaVision is greatfully
acknowledged.

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