ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses future prospects for the techniques in terms of their practical application to industrial problems. Full field visualization techniques based on diffraction have been used quite extensively to study surface waves. Surface defects have been extensively studied recently, and it has been shown that laser techniques perform at least as well as piezoelectric transducers, in many cases with higher spatial resolution. The chapter also discusses possible future research and development of the laser techniques and their application to ultrasonics. It attempts to highlight areas where there are gaps in understanding, or where further experiments are required to resolve certain issues. There needs to be further work to improve the sensitivity of laser techniques for measuring ultrasonic fields. In the case of good reflective surfaces, there are two main avenues to explore when sensitivity is photon-noise limited. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
