Structural and topological properties of Cu(In,Ga)Se-2 (CIGSe) thin films sandwiched in multilayer structures for photovoltaic heterodiodes show significant lateral variations obviously introduced by polycrystallinity. These variations are accompanied by lateral fluctuations in optoelectronic properties such as recombination rates and minority life times emerging e.g. in laterally resolved photoluminescence (PL) and according splitting of quasi-Fermi energies and showing patterns in the several micron-regime (2 - 8 mu m) that by far exceed typical grain sizes of I tim. For the extraction of features from Cu(Ga,In)Se-2 absorbers with different Ga admixtures and for their visualization we have applied 2D Fourier transforms and erosion/dilatation Minkowski-operations (opening functions) which provide insight into size and shape of lateral patterns, and into frequencies of occurrence and distribution of characteristic features. We demonstrate that topological properties (AFM-contours) and optical reflection mainly governed by the topological contours in typical scan-regimes of (50 mu m)(2) contain data that are fairly statistically representative for the entire sample, whereas for larger features such as PL-yields within Ga contents of (30 - 75)% the necessary size of scan regimes amounts at least to (300 mu m)(2). For a sound analysis and a potential subsequent optimization of such polycrystalline solids, what kind ever be the type of study, like optical, electronic, or transport measurements, a micron-size resolution seems to be unavoidable, and furthermore, a minimum appropriate size of scan regimes has to be met in order to get relevant representative data. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.