Application of FPA test system technology to commercial inspection/measurement systems

Research conducted for the Army has recently developed an FPA (focal plane array) integrated test and evaluation system to provide a testbed for evaluating FPA characteristics and resulting object detection effectiveness. The system design offers various combinations of image processing algorithms with real–time display of raw and processed (i.e., resulting from the application of each chosen algorithm) FPA data. Because this design does not restrict itself to one particular processing scheme, it can be used for a variety of non–military applications requiring object detection within image frames. This paper investigates application of the FPA test system to commercial inspection/measurement tasks, presenting experimental results for product classification by size and color and for product grading by size, features, and quality.