Wednesday, January 18, 2012

What can multi-spectral imaging do for you?


I’ve long been fascinated by the 2-CCD cameras from JAI. I know they do a 3-CDD version too, and there’s an interesting application case study on the Vision & Sensors site (Jan 5th, 2012,) but that’s aimed more at color applications. What I like about the 2-CCD model is that it combines visible and IR imaging through the same lens, for which I can see many possible applications. (Okay, full disclosure: I haven’t bought any of these because they’re somewhat expensive, but the concept is great.)

For those of you who struggle to see where you would use such a camera, JAI have placed a short movie on YouTube, but to save you time I’ve embedded it below.


What has always intrigued me though is that JAI seem to miss what I see as the biggest benefit of this camera concept: it allows the use of multiple lighting strategies at the same location on the production line.

For example, suppose I need both a darkfield image and a front-lit image of a part moving down a production line. I’m forced to have two separate stations with two cameras, and that takes up valuable floorspace. With an AD-080CL camera I need only one station, saving me precious space.

Now I shall sit back and wait for my royalties from JAI.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you really need an IR camera
just to combine different lighting setups? It sounds like you could achieve the same effect with two visible colors and a standard color camera.

Anonymous said...

Color camera has lower resolution with same amount of pixels.