Region sampling for robust and rapid autofocus in microscope.

This paper proposes a region sampling based autofocus method for rapid and robust autofocus in microscope. Image content and region size are considered in region sampling criteria. An intelligent search algorithm which employs quartering hill climbing search and golden section search is developed, in which rule-based evaluation of sampled focusing regions is applied. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly improve the performance of image-based autofocus.