Patent ID: 6970251

Claim:
Method for measuring vibrations in small and microscopic objects, comprising the steps of: vibrating the object at an excitation frequency, illuminating the object with a light source producing a light wave which is phase modulated at the same frequency, collecting data from a detector array, illuminating the detector array with a reference wave which is at least partly coherent to the light wave which is illuminating the object, phase modulating the reference light wave or the object light wave with a freguency equal to or nearly equal to the object excitation freguency, operating an algorithm to calculate the size of interference term between the object and reference light wave for all points on the detector array, operating an algorithm based on multiple calculation of the interference term at different vibrations phases between the excitation of the object, and the phase modulation of the object light wave or reference light wave, and operating an algorithm based on use of the result from the calculation of the above interference terms to calculate the amplitude values and phase values for the vibration of the surface of the object.