Morphological analysis of continuous metal films

During the study of images in thin-film physics the methods convenient for the quantitative description of him photographs must be applied and the con nection between the morphological characteristics obtained and physical pro perties of the films established. In the case of semicontinuous and continu ous films, whose micrographs can be described in terms of image processing as grey scale images as opposed to bilevel pictures of discontinuous metal films, the methods of characterisation of film micrographs are still to be invented and proper physical interpretation found. In this paper two method s of image analysis of multilevel pictures in physics are suggested and the ir applicability tested by computer experiment. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science L td. All rights reserved.