A method for characterization of metallic powder including presenting a metallic powder sample to a laser and detector system, wherein the metallic powder sample passes through the laser and detector system via a sample introducer; applying a pulsed laser beam to a first location in the metallic powder sample to provide a first micro-plasma at the first location in the metallic powder sample when the pulsed laser beam terminates, the micro-plasma cools to provide spectral emissions at the first location; collecting the spectral emissions at the first location in the metallic powder sample with a detector; analyzing the spectral emissions at the first location to provide a spectral analysis dataset; and identifying inclusions at the first location in the metallic powder sample.

The invention concerns method and an apparatus for analyzing the quality and quantity of bubbles or droplets of a dispersed phase in a construction material. The method may be used on construction materials before or during curing of the material, while in a non-solid state with the dispersed phase being entrapped therein. The inventive analyzing includes the steps of: applying a first side of an at least partially transparent plate in contact with a sample of said construction material to make a surface of said sample visible through said transparent plate; illuminating said surface of said sample through said plate from an opposite second side of said plate with at least one light source; providing a photosensitive sensor on said second side of said plate for receiving light reflected from said sample through said transparent plate, receiving from said photosensitive sensor electrical signals corresponding to said received reflected light and rendering from said electrical signals a visual representation of said surface of said sample using an imaging device; analyzing said visual representation with a computer system, by identifying bubbles or droplets of said dispersed phase from the surface of the sample by a spatial illumination encoding of the sample; and by determining the size and location of identified bubbles or droplets of said dispersed phase. Finally, an indication of the quality of said construction material is computed, based on the size and distribution of the identified bubbles or droplets of said dispersed phase in said sample.

Disclosed herein is a spectrometer device for detecting incident radiation generated by an object and a spectrometer system

The spectrometer device and the spectrometer system for detecting incident radiation generated by an object includes: a measurement window, a detector array, an optical filter, and at least one optical element configured for modifying the field of view of at least one pixelated sensor by increasing at least one overlap between the field of views of the at least two pixelated sensors.

Further described herein is the advantage that the spectrometer device and the spectrometer system are robust against the granularity of an object, particularly by providing a sensor signal that may be correlated in a common measurement result, as the fields of view of the single pixelated sensors have an increased overlap.