Patent ID: 7702134

Claim:
An apparatus for determining coordinates of a target region in a tire comprising: means for generating a tire digital image; means for finding the edge of a tire bead from the tire image using pixel brightness values from the tire image; means for calculating a tire bead circle center and radius using a plurality of image pixels on the tire bead edge; and means for performing a pixel brightness search around the bead circumference using the bead circle's center and radius to identify by pixel brightness differentiation the target region X, Y coordinates on the tire; wherein the means determining the slope of the target area comprises: a distance-measuring device locatable at a first position (P 1 ) above the target region using X, Y coordinates of the target region; the distance-measuring device measuring the distance D 1 from the distance-measuring means to a first location (P 1 ) in the target region; the distance-measuring device being locatable to a second position above a second location (P 2 ) in the target region along a line through the bead circle center and measuring the distance (D 2 ) from the distance measuring device (P 2 ), the target region slope with respect to horizontal being derived from the distances (D 1 ) and (D 2 ) at positions (P 1 and P 2 ).