PC control and data processing in relation with a standalone laser beam analyzer

T. Visan and D. G. Sporea

Citation: Review of Scientific Instruments 71, 2610 (2000); doi: 10.1063/1.1150658
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.1150658
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/rsi/71/6?ver=pdfcov
Published by the AIP Publishing

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitationnew.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:
78.111.165.165 On: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:46:29

REVIEW OF SCIENTIFIC INSTRUMENTS

VOLUME 71, NUMBER 6

JUNE 2000

PC control and data processing in relation with a standalone laser beam

analyzer
T. Visan and D. G. Sporeaa)
National Institute for Lasers, Plasma and Radiation Physics, Magurele, RO-76900, Romania

Received 26 July 1999; accepted for publication 28 February 2000

In this note we present a PC-based remote control and data processing setup and the associated
software, developed in LabVIEW, working in conjunction with a laser beam analyzer. The setup
expands the imaging processing techniques for the laser beam profile, especially in relation to the
three-dimensional data representation and manipulation, by using the strong graphical processing
and presentation libraries of the HIQ and IMAQ Vision software packages. One novelty of the
proposed program consists in its multi-image processing ability with regard to images acquired
under different conditions, and which have to be processed aligned to their centroids and their major
axes. 2000 American Institute of Physics. S0034-67480003706-0

In this note we address the problem that exists with almost all laser beam analyzers: data processing/presentation is
done by the producers property software. In this way, it is
difficult to integrate such instrumentation into more complex
systems for data acquisition synchronization, databases development, and a unitary result presentation. In most standalone instruments, the communication software package provided by the producer is also a very specific program, with
no compatibility with some other software packages, which
would enable the product integration into a PC-controlled
complex setup.
The philosophy behind the software we developed is
based on several simple and practical considerations.
1 It should be used in conjunction with the Spiricon
LBA-1001 laser beam analyzer, but it can be easily
adapted to any type of standalone instrument.
2 The virtual instrument described in this note works with
both communication protocols, serial communication
and a general purpose interface bus GPIB by using the
industrial standard data acquisition software LabVIEW.
In this way, through the virtual instrumentation concept,
full compatibility with other PC-controlled instruments
is assured, and complex experimental setups can be
built, integrating, for example, data acquisition boards,
laser characterization equipment, oscilloscopes, electromechanical stages controllers, etc.
3 Data processing/manipulation/visualization is done with
the software package associated with LabVIEW, namely,
HiQ,2 but other popular software packages such as MatLAB or Mathematica could be used. In this way, the
already existing strong data processing/manipulation
software libraries could easily be used.
4 By using this programming approach, the program we
propose is an open one. As compared to producers
property software that could not be modified/extended
a

Electronic mail: sporea@ifin.nipne.ro

by the user, our program enables the user to define new

functions/procedures3,4 for a specific application.
We started to build this virtual instrument by taking into
account the fact that most standalone laser beam analyzers
have a communication port for data exchange and that the
program has to be based on mathematical software available
to many laboratories.
The virtual instrument we propose permits the serial/
parallel transfer of the acquired image, embedding information on the modal distribution of the laser to be investigated,
and also performs a set of functions for remote control of the
instrument. For the case of communication through a GPIB
we used a National Instruments PCI-GPIB5 board. This program also calculates the basic parameters of the laser beam
and meanwhile provides a fast three dimensional 3D
representation/manipulation6 of the laser intensity profile by
accessing IMAQ Vision graphical functions library. The advantage of using IMAQ Vision is that it is fully compatible
with the National Instruments software. One of the functions
performed by the developed software is to remotely control
the laser beam analyzer unit. This communication can be
made either by a serial RS 232 communication port or by the
much more efficient GPIB. The GPIB offers the advantage
that more devices for laser beam investigation can be
coupled to this bus and therefore many more parameters can
be recorded with a temporal correlation between them. The
virtual instrument controls communication with the laser
beam analyzer and one can set communication to any parameters corresponding to the communication port type.
Through these communications lines the user is able to send
commands as strings of characters to the laser beam analyzer. These commands substitute for keyboard control of the
laser beam analyzer unit and pass control to the remote PC.
By using these channels all parameters characterizing the
laser beam already calculated by the laser beam analyzer unit
can be read by the PC and used for further image processing
and mathematical calculations. One of the most important
parts of the program is the graphical interface because it

0034-6748/2000/71(6)/2610/2/$17.00
2610
2000 American Institute of Physics
This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitationnew.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:
78.111.165.165 On: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:46:29

Rev. Sci. Instrum., Vol. 71, No. 6, June 2000

ensures easy handling by the user. Therefore we translated

all functions of the keyboard of the laser beam analyzer onto
the computer screen and any command can be called by a
mouse click. In this way, an ergonomic interface is available
to the user, an interface that mimics the corresponding commands of the real instrument, similarly located for the users
convenience. New commands were also added, but are only
available in the remote control state. This is also improvement of the device possibilities since one can very easily
explore a set of device functions that otherwise would have
not been possible.
For more complex processing of the acquired image, image data are passed as a matrix of 120120 elements to
common mathematical software. The matrix corresponds to
an area of the charge coupled device CCD sensor, therefore
the dimensions in length units are proportional to the CCD
sensors pixels dimensions/pitch. In our case the length units
for the x and y axes were equal to 0.033 mm. In this case,
HiQ 3.1 was used on the basis that LabVIEW already has
built-in procedures for communication with HiQ. For other
mathematical software packages the communication is made
by object linking and embedding OLE. Once the image is
transferred, a script is started in order to provide a three
dimensional view of the laser beam profile and to calculate
its basic parameters, such as the major axis, the coordinates
of the centroid, etc. The mathematical script is designed to
process an image with emphasis on three dimensional representation and to enable the user to modify or to add other
processing algorithms. There are also some other imageprocessing procedures that are applied to the acquired image.
These procedures are the following:
1 fitting the surface corresponding to the image matrix
with a user defined function f (x,y);
2 mathematical operation involving two or more images
for the evaluation of laser beam changes as it propagates
through different media and calculus of the laser beam
divergence;
3 image filtering designed for noise reduction;
4 cross sections made after planes described by equations
given by the user, zooming, rotating, etc.
In the case of evaluating the changes undergone by a
laser beam profile, the images acquired in different media are
likely to be shifted from one to the other. This shift may lead
to significant errors in the image-processing procedure.
Therefore the proposed software first aligns the image frames

Notes

2611

FIG. 1. 3D view of the difference between the conjugated pulse profile and
the pump pulse profile.

to overlap their centroids and rotate the images to overlap

their major axes. In Fig. 1 is presented the difference between the profile of a YAGNd laser beam and the profile of
the same beam after phase conjugation in a multimode optical fiber using stimulated Brillouin scattering. In this experiment the initial pulse presents a Gaussian profile. In order to
evaluate the similarity between the conjugated pulse and the
pump pulse one has to subtract one from the other. The result
of this subtraction is shown in Fig. 1 where it can be seen
that the difference between profiles is not two Gaussian differences like expected, however the difference between the
images is small compared with the their amplitude.
The virtual instrument presented can be interconnected
to others programs and execute remote control on other devices that can be power meters, spectrum analyzers, etc. in
order to control them at the same time. In this way a more
complex investigation of the laser system can be performed.
The authors want to thank to Spiricon, Inc. for donating
the LBA100 laser beam analyzer.
1

Operators Manual, Spiricon Laser Beam Diagnostics, Laser Beam Analyzer, model LBA 100.
2
HiQ User Manual, Bimillennium Corporation, 16795 Lark Avenue, Suite
200, Los Gatos, CA 95030.
3
ISO / DIS 11145, Optics and Optical InstrumentsLasers and Laser Related EquipmentVocabulary and Symbols 1995.
4
ISO / DIS 11145, Optics and Optical InstrumentsLasers and Laser Related EquipmentTest Method for Laser Beam Parameters: Beam
Widths, Divergence Angle and Beam Propagation Factor 1995.
5
NI-488.2M, Function Reference Manual for Win 32, National Instruments
Corporation, November 1995 Ed., Part No. 321038A-01.
6
D. G. Sporea, G. Dumitru, and B. Prelipcean, Proc. SPIE 3736, 328
1998.

This article is copyrighted as indicated in the article. Reuse of AIP content is subject to the terms at: http://scitationnew.aip.org/termsconditions. Downloaded to IP:
78.111.165.165 On: Wed, 04 Dec 2013 18:46:29