Patent ID: 7116814

Claim:
An image-based container defects detector for finding a defect located in a defective portion of a container that also has a normal portion that is not defective, the container additionally having a container number in a container number area, said defect detector comprising: container defect positioning program module means for capturing the container number area in a colored image of the container; HIS (Hue, Intensity, Saturation) color transformation module means for transforming the image in color to provide a transformed image; segmentation means for receiving the transformed image and segmenting the defective portion form the normal portion to provide a segmented image, the segmentation means including a quad-tree split module and an image merge module; image filter module means for filtering the normal portion out of the segmented image to provide a filtered image; and container defect positioning module means for precisely locating the defect in the segmented image, wherein the quad-tree split module segments the transformed image into 20×15 blocks of size 32×32 and then the blocks are selectively split by said quad-tree module into sub-blocks, wherein the quad-tree split module utilizes HIS color variance to determine whether blocks should be split, wherein a code number is given to each sub-block and the code number is pushed into a queue, and wherein each code number is taken out of the queue and checked should the corresponding sub-block should be split again.