Comparison of Polymers: A New Application of Shape From Focus

New polymers are frequently appearing in the literature with a wide range of applications, e.g., they are being used in applications like fuel cell membrane, fertilizers, coating elements, etc. One of the requirements of the researchers involved in polymer science is to quickly compare the samples being fabricated. One of the measures for comparison is surface roughness. However, the high cost involved in the estimation of surface roughness limits its extensive and exhaustive usage. In this paper, we propose to estimate the surface roughness using the image focus, i.e., shape from focus (SFF). We show that the results from SFF are encouraging for comparison of polymers using surface roughness.