Patent ID: 9310312
Filing Date: 2016-04-12
CPC Classification: G01N,G06T

Claim Text:
1. A method for automatic inspection of a plurality of through-holes of a component, comprising: obtaining a thermographic image of the component generated by passing a medium through the plurality of through-holes and capturing infra-red radiation emitted from the component while the medium is flowing through the plurality of through-holes; generating a digital image from geometrical data of the component based on a viewing position of the thermographic image; determining positions of the plurality of through-holes by identifying depressions on a surface of the component in the digital image; computing a digital image mask for the determined positions of the plurality of through-holes on the digital image; fitting the thermographic image on the digital image obtained from geometrical data of the component; masking the fitted thermographic image using the digital image mask to extract regions corresponding to the plurality of through-holes in the thermographic image wherein the digital image mask is computed based on the determining of the positions of the plurality of through-holes on the digital image; and evaluating the masked thermographic image to determine an irregularity or blockage in one or more of the plurality of through-holes, wherein computing the digital image mask involves setting pixel values of all bits to ‘1’ for a region corresponding to the positions of the through-holes on the digital image and setting pixel values of all bits to ‘0’ in the remaining portion of the digital image and the masking the fitted thermographic image involves a logical combination of the digital image mask with the fitted thermographic image using a bitwise AND operation.