HueView technology offers comprehensive colour analysis

The Value Engineering Alliance, providers of machine vision solutions, have launched HueView, innovative inspection technology specifically developed to deliver comprehensive colour analysis of multicoloured, patterned and textured items. The product can be used to measure colour (in RGB, HSI or LAB space) and texture, monitor product appearance, classify/ grade goods, and facilitate sorting operations. In addition, it can assess visual similarity or detect defects by comparing images of items or scenes of interest to their respective stored reference images. HueView optimises its flexibility, accuracy and repeatability by operating at high spatial resolutions and enabling inspections to be carried out based on colour, texture or a user selectable combination of the two. Allowing texture analysis to be factored into inspections as required ensures that items possessing sufficiently similar colour content but featuring varying mixes of multiple colours or subtle defects in their patterns can still be identified as being of unsatisfactory appearance. HueView is currently available in the form of an easy-to-use WinTel-compatible software application that supports image acquisition using FireWire cameras, TWAIN and analogue camera/framegrabber combinations, eliminates the need for programming, is quickly trained by simply being shown reference examples, incorporates powerful pattern recognition and learning capabilities and requires no follow-up data analysis. A typical solution consists of the existing software application running on a PC that features a Pentium 4 processor operating at ≥ 3.0 GHz, a light box, industrial microscope, camera stand or online setup and an appropriate camera, optics and illumination configuration.