6. Conclusion

The main developments in recent years have been in the development of equipment and digital image acquisition and processing applications. The automation of certain stages in the observation process, such as mechanical or electrolytic polishing, has become increasingly widespread. The motorization of microscopes is beginning to develop, and coupled with software optimization, will enable, in the near future, efficient and rapid automatic adjustment of sharpness, and fully automated acquisition of three-dimensional images of surfaces and micrographs. The development of workpiece magazines with mechanized sample changing would then enable automatic image acquisition in the absence of an operator, as with robotized machining.