Multivariate approach to obtain real-time behavior of image processing applications

Abstract

Surface defects on metallic and non-metallic components can have serious effects on the reliability of the complete system. Typical examples are pistons with surface defects that cause scratching of the cylinder surface. For this reason it is of utmost importance to detect such defects as early as possible in the production process. So far, no real time solutions exist that fully satisfy industrial requirements in terms of speed, accuracy and reliability. Hence it is common to use visual inspection by humans which is error prone and causes additional personal costs. In this paper a new approach to obtain real time behaviour of industrial image processing systems by using multivariate techniques is presented. This methodology is originally used in chemometrics for statistical evaluation of measurement data and is now applied to image processing to take advantage of the high numerical efficiency of the underlying mathematics. Multivariate techniques can be applied to both the problem of automatic identification and classification of surface defects with digital images. The key to the envisaged real time ability is the high numerical efficiency of the proposed multivariate method. It manages defect detection with vector/matrix multiplication only - no calculation of powers or exponential functions is required. This enables efficient real time implementations on DSP platforms which are profiled for this type of calculations.