3-D imaging of surface topography of wear particles found in synovial joints

Significant advances have recently been made in the numerical characterizat ion of particle boundaries. However, progress in the numerical characteriza tion of particle surfaces is slow. There are two fundamental issues associa ted with this problem: i.e., the acquisition of reliable three-dimensional (3-D) surface data and numerical description of the 3-D surface features. I n this paper, the first issue is addressed while the second issue will be a ddressed in our next papers. Pairs of field emission scanning electron micr oscope (FESEM) stereo images of wear particles found in synovial joints hav e been acquired. A specially developed stereoscopy method was applied to th e acquired FESEM images in order to obtain 3-D surface topography data of w ear particles. The surface topography data obtained from the wear particles was then processed to produce: the range image, the contour map and the sh aded image of a particle surface. The surface topography of wear particles was also shown in the colour stereo images. The results obtained in this st udy have clearly demonstrated that 3-D surface topography data of wear part icles is very helpful in particle visualization and it can be used in numer ical description of the surface. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.