High-speed structured planar laser illumination for contrast improvement of two-phase flow images

A high-speed method to remove blurring effects caused by multiple scattering in planar laser images of two-phase flows is demonstrated. The technique is based on structured illumination and is for the first time to our knowledge applied on a dynamic medium. As structured illumination requires three successive images to be recorded and to freeze the flow motion in time, a high-speed laser and imaging system is employed. We show that by using a time delay of 55 us between the images a single-shot representation of a dilute flow of water droplets can be achieved. By having an additional inner stream with known structure and composition, the efficiency of the method is quantitatively evaluated, showing an increase from 58% to 93% in image contrast. Such an improvement allows more accurate analysis and interpretation of scattering two-phase flow images. (C) 2008 Optical Society of America