Fast simulation of atomic-force-microscope imaging of atomic and polygonal surfaces using graphics hardware

We present a fast method for computing simulated Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) image scans (including tip artifacts). The basic insight is that the array of depth values in the depth buffer of a graphics system is analogous to the height field making up an AFM image, and thus the ability of graphics hardware to compute the depth of many pixels in parallel can be used to radically speed up the AFM imaging simulation. We also present a method for reconstructing better approximations to the true shape from AFM images distorted by tip artifacts. These algorithms are implemented using operations from 3D grayscale mathematical morphology operations of dilation and erosion.