Polaroid Corporation

Teradyne, Inc.

John C Bowman

Pamela R Lipson

Ibrahim Hajjahmad

Yibing Yang

Peter E Schmidt

An optical system for use in an inspection system is described. The optical system includes an imaging system which may be provided as a multi-spectral band pass image recording system and a lighting system which includes at least one coaxial light and at least one side light to provide spectral discrimination and to provide contrast between a first surface made from a first material and a second surface made from a second different material.

Optical system

The present invention is useful in taking a visible light image for identification and other purposes without the requirement of a photobooth, regardless of the background of the visible light image. The original background of the visible light image is replaced with a preselected background. Two IR images with different intensities of IR illumination in the foreground and background regions of the scene, respectively, are compared to produce a difference image of light intensity differences between corresponding pixels of the two images. A binarized image is generated by binarizing the difference image with respect to a predetermined threshold value .theta.. A connectivity constraint is used to generate a binary mask from the binarized image, then a gray-scale mask is produced by multiplying the binary mask times a preselected modulation function of the difference image. Warping the gray-scale mask produces a transformed mask. Finally, the background replaced visible light image is generated by blending the transformed mask with the visible light image, and replacing the original background with the preselected background.

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Lexington, MA, United States of America

John C Bowman