Patent ID: 8008641

Claim:
An imaging system comprising at least two image sensors to produce video images of a first golf ball, wherein said image sensors are arranged to produce images of the same first golf ball, and wherein said image sensors produce at least two separate images in the same spectral range of the electromagnetic spectrum from the same perspective using a common light source to provide incident light for each image, said images being produced at different times in succession, wherein each image is of different brightness so that each image shows the same surface of the golf ball, each image having a different light exposure time so that different levels of incident light are captured and each image shows different visible areas and shadowed areas of the surface; a vision engine for blending the images together to produce a single blended image showing the same surface of the golf ball as shown in the separate images, the different areas of the surface being equally visible in the blended image; and automated analyzer for performing inspection routines on the blended image, wherein the blended image is compared to master images of an exemplary golf ball so that defects on the surface of the first golf ball are detected.