The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 17, 2001
Filed:
Aug. 11, 1998
William Richard Lawrence, Windsor, CO (US);
Agilent Technologies, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (US);
Abstract
The present invention provides a method and apparatus for detecting defects in a display. The apparatus of the present invention comprises a camera for capturing an image of a display being inspected and processing circuitry, such as, for example, a microprocessor or a digital signal processor (DSP), for processing the captured image to determine whether or not the display being inspected is defective. Preferably, the processing circuitry is a microprocessor running image processing software which controls data acquisition as well as the processing of the acquired data to determine whether the display being inspected is defective. In accordance with the present invention, a relatively high resolution display can be inspected using a single camera, preferably a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera, which has a lower resolution than the display being inspected. The camera is focused on the display such that the entire display is within the field of view of the camera. The camera then captures an image of the display, digitizes the image and stores the digitized image in a memory device which is in communication with the processing circuitry. The processing circuitry then reads the image data out of memory and averages all of the image data to obtain an average value corresponding to the brightness of the display. Once this average value has been obtained, the processing circuitry performs various processes with the image data and with the average value to determine whether the display being inspected is defective.