Single Pixel Evaluation of Microchannel Flows

Recently a new μPIV interrogation algorithm has been proposed in which the interrogation window size is reduced to a single pixel. Such small interrogation window sizes are possible using correlation averaging to increase the effective particle concentration to levels required for correlation analysis to succeed. The random error exhibits the expected behavior of decreasing roughly in proportion to N^−1/2 while the bias error exhibits unexpected peak-locking behavior with zero bias error at integer and half integer pixel displacements and maximal errors at one-quarter and three-quarter pixel displacements. Accompanying experiments show the potential of this technique but have not yet been sufficiently refined to confirm this unexpected bias error behavior.