All stitched up

Software that can produce a single seamless image from several smaller ones is now available from The Value Engineering Alliance, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based provider of machine vision solutions.

Originally developed as a key component of a colour CCD camera-based microscanner system used to acquire images of tissue sample slides commonly processed as part of medical education programs, the software is suitable for use in other areas involving items of interest that are too large to be imaged in their entirety at the desired or required resolutions.

Such stitched together images could enable companies to implement more efficient automated inspection of  products such as semiconductor devices, microcircuits, flexible circuits, solar cells, or ceramic tiles.

The digitisation of large skins/hides on certain automated leather cutting systems is already accomplished by piecing together many snapshots acquired in sequence by an indexing camera. In this case, use of the software to improve the image stitching performance of the systems would result in more accurate nesting and cutting operations and ultimately better yields.