Recent advances in digital particle image velocimetry methods for flow motion analysis

The advent of charge-coupled devices (CCD) has significantly extended the horizons of full-field measurement methods in many fields of fundamental and applied sciences, including fluid flow dynamics. One of the major applications of imaging sensors in fluid mechanics is the Digital Particle Image Velocimetry (DPIV), which is a non-invasive, full field optical measuring technique. Due to recent advances in image processing methods, and in digital imaging, laser and optics DPIV has become a dominant tool for obtaining velocity information about fluid motion. On the other hand, over the last years, developments in microand nanofluidic systems have promised a shrinking of the desktop-sized chemical and biological devices to microscale size, so a detailed investigation of the behaviour of flow inside these microdevices is essential for the optimum design of microsystems, as well as for an understanding of flow dynamics in micron scales. In this work, the advances in visualization and quantitative measurements of flow velocity measurements are reviewed and explained.