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:
Aug. 17, 2010
Filed:
May. 16, 2006
Noriyuki Hiraoka, Obu, JP;
Noriyuki Hiraoka, Obu, JP;
Meinan Machinery Works, Inc., Aichi, JP;
Abstract
The photographing means of the present apparatus photographs a piece of wood, while the image processing means calculates degrees of circularity from the photographed images of the piece of wood, and detects images with significant degrees of circularity as knots. In addition, the image processing meansclips a portion including a knot from the photographed image of the piece of wood, deems a portion clipped at a predetermined threshold among the color spaces of each pixel of the clipped portions to be a blackened portion, and determines black portions with a high proportion of a number of pixels of the blackened portion to the number of pixels of the clipped portion of the knot as dead knots.