Illumination invariant measurement of mechanical dimensions using a multiple segmentation method

In many industrial processes the need for better quality assurance leads to a higher degree of process automation which often includes an optical inspection system. In our case the mechanical dimensions of printed micro structures on ceramic substrates have to be evaluated. Therefore an optical inspection system providing high resolution images with 12288 pixel × 14000 pixel was developed. The segmentation task in this setup is challenging caused by the huge amount of data and the different appearances of the micro structures depending on size, material, and humidity. For this purpose we present a multiple segmentation method and evaluate the results against common used segmentation methods on a number of different real images. Experimental results show that the proposed optical inspection system and algorithms can achieve an illumination invariant high resolution measurement of the micro structures.