Separation and Analysis of Connected, Micrometer-Sized, High-Frequency Damage on Glass Plates due to Laser-Accelerated Material Fragments in Vacuum

In this paper, we present a new processing method, called MOSES-Impacts, for the detection of micrometer-sized damage on glass plate surfaces. It extends existing methods by a separation of damaged areas, called impacts, to support state-of-the-art recycling systems in optimizing their parameters. These recycling systems are used to repair process-related damages on glass plate surfaces, caused by accelerated material fragments, which arise during a laser-matter interaction in a vacuum. Due to a high number of impacts, the presented MOSES-Impacts algorithm focuses on the separation of connected impacts in two-dimensional images. This separation is crucial for the extraction of relevant features such as centers of gravity and radii of impacts, which are used as recycling parameters. The results show that the MOSES-Impacts algorithm effectively separates impacts, achieves a mean agreement with human users of (82.0 ± 2.0)%, and improves the recycling of glass plate surfaces by identifying around 7% of glass plate surface area as being not in need of repair compared to existing methods.