Harnessing digital imaging to detect the transmittance coupled with the uniformity of transparent optical materials

A digital image (DI) method is reported to determine the transmittance and the uniformity of transparent optical materials (TOMs) at the same time, in which an objective image (OI) with a two dimensional (2D) entropy of 3.45 is scanned using a scanner with a black background. The OI pictures covered without and with a TOM went through gamma correction and color correction. The two corrected pictures were transformed into two matrixes, between which the transparency ratio and the correlation coefficient refer to the transmittance and the uniformity of TOMs. As a result, a p-value of 0.97 and an r value of 0.92 were achieved from the paired T-test between the DI method and the ultraviolet spectrometry (UVS) method, indicating a similar accuracy in determining the transmittance of TOMs between them. In addition, the DI method is a simple and rapid method to evaluate the uniformity of TOMs and to reveal the correlation among transmittance, uniformity and thickness of TOMs, particularly applicable for inhomogeneous TOMs.