MountainsMap
Mountains is an image analysis and surface metrology software platform published by the company Digital Surf. Its core is "micro-topography", the science of studying surface texture and form in 3D at the microscopic scale. The software is dedicated to profilometers, 3D light microscopes, scanning electron microscopes and scanning probe microscopes.
Integration by instrument manufacturers
The main editor's distribution channel is OEM, through the integration of MountainsMap by most profiler and microscope manufacturers, usually under their respective brands.Compatibility
- Mountains native file format is the SURF format.
- Mountains is compatible with most instruments of the market capable of supplying images or topography.
- Mountains complies to the ISO 25178 standard on 3D surface texture evaluation and offers the profile and areal filters defined in ISO 16610.
- The metrology reports are generated in proprietary format but can also be exported to PDF and RTF formats.
- Mountains is available in English, Brazilian Portuguese, simplified Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Russian and Spanish.
Data types ("studiables") accepted
- refer to space coordinates, to the time, and to an intensity. means is function of, referring usually to space coordinates and to a scalar.
- In Mountains's vocabulary, these data types are referred to as "studiables".
Mountains analyses the following basic data types:
| Data type | Example Image | Formula | Application | Has a time-dynamic equivalent | Instrument |
| Profile | Yes | stylus 2D profilometer. | |||
| Parametric profile | "Contour": Form analysis in 2D | No | Contour instruments | ||
| Surface | Surface Topography | Yes | Optical or contact 3D profilometer | ||
| Shell | Analysis of Free Form Surfaces | No | Multiple axis profilometers, tomographs | ||
| Point clouds | Import of non-meshed shells and surfaces | No | Scanning devices | ||
| True color image | True color or gray-level image | Yes | Scanning Electron Microscope, Light microscope, simple camera | ||
| Surface-image | Topography and true color image | No | optical profilometer providing the topography with the image | ||
| Multi-channel image | No | Atomic force microscope, spectrum analyzer, correlative imaging using heterogeneous sources | |||
| Multi-channel cube | No | FIB-SEM, Confocal-Raman tomography | |||
| Force curves | Yes | Atomic force microscopes | |||
| Spectrum | Yes | Spectrometer | |||
| Hyperspectral image | No | X-Y scanning spectrometer, hyperspectral camera, SEM/EDX, Raman, Cathodoluminescence... |
History of versions
- Digital Surf launched their first surface analysis software package in 1990 for MS-DOS, then their first 3D surface analysis package in 1991 for Macintosh II.
- Version 1.0 of MountainsMap was launched in September 1996, introducing a change in the name after a move of the editor to Windows from MsDos and Macintosh platforms.
- Version 5.0 introduced the management of multi-layers images. It was a move to Confocal microscopy, and to SPM image analysis.
- Version 6.0 completed the specialization of the platform per instrument type. For Version 6.0 the company teamed with a group of alpinists to launch the new version at the summit of the Makalu mountain. A special logo was created for this marketing event. The expedition was successful and Alexia Zuberer, a French and Swiss mountaineer was then the first Swiss woman to reach the summit of the Makalu, Sandrine de Choudens, a French PhD in chemistry being the first French woman to succeed
- Version 7.0 was unveiled in September 2012 at the European Microscopy Congress in Manchester, UK. It expanded the list of instruments supported, in particular with new Scanning electron microscope 3D reconstruction software and hyperspectral data analysis.
- Version 7.2 introduces near real-time 3D topography reconstruction for scanning electron microscopes
- Version 7.3 adds fast colorization of scanning electron microscope images based on object-oriented image segmentation.
- Version 7.4 offers 3D reconstruction from a single SEM image, and enhanced 3D printing
- Version 8.0 is the successor of both Mountains 7.4 and SPIP 6.7 software packages after the acquisition by Digital Surf of the Danish company Image Metrology A/S, the editor of SPIP. Version 8.0 also introduces the analysis of free form surfaces, called "Shells" in the software.
- Version 9.0 completes the "shells" with surface texture analysis adapted from the ISO 25178 parameters already calculated on the standard surfaces. It also comes with a new product line, "MountainsSpectral", dedicated to the chemical mapping of elements in both 2D and 3D, with applications such as FIB-SEM EDX or confocal Raman
- Version 10.0 completes the list of supported microscopes with Light Microscopes, and introduces new features such as CAD-comparison of free-form surfaces, aspherics lens analysis.
Instruments supported
| Version | Instruments supported | Specific functions |
| MountainsMap Profile | 2D Profilometers | ISO 25178 surface texture parameters Roughness, Waviness, Contour analysis |
| MountainsMap Topography | 3D Profilometers based on single point sensors | ISO 25178 Surface topography parameters 3D surface topography rendering Sensor range expansion by vertical patching |
| MountainsMap Imaging Topography | White light interferometers Confocal Microscopes Fringe projection profilometers | Management of missing/bad data points Field expansion by stitching 3D true-color management |
| MountainsSEM | Scanning electron microscopes | 3D reconstruction from a stereo pair 3D reconstruction using a 4-quadrant detector semi-automatic colorization |
| MountainsSPIP | Atomic force microscopes Scanning tunneling microscopes | Multi-Channel SPM image management Force curve analysis |
| MountainsSpectral | Cathodoluminescence microscopes | Hyperspectral analysis |
| MountainsLab | All of the previous | Correlative microscopy |