Patent ID: 7408570

Claim:
A web inspection system for detecting a plurality of web flaws of a web, the web inspection system comprising: a plurality of smart cameras for generating a digital pixel representation of a portion of the web, each smart camera for detecting the plurality of web flaws from the digital pixel representation and for generating output data comprising a digitized image of each flaw of the plurality of web flaws and for generating flaw location data for each flaw of the plurality of web flaws; a host computer for controlling the web inspection system and for receiving and displaying the flaw image data and the flaw location data; and an ethernet for connecting the plurality of smart cameras to the host computer, wherein the flaw image data and the flaw location data is transmitted over the ethernet from the plurality of smart cameras directly to the host computer; wherein each smart camera of the plurality of smart cameras comprises: a line scan camera for generating the digital pixel representation of a portion of the web; a lighting uniformity and pixel sensitivity correction means for correcting each pixel of the digital pixel representation and for providing a corrected pixel representation; a web edge detector for detecting at least one edge of the web; a multi-pipeline pre-processor for filtering the corrected pixel representation, the multi-pipeline pre-processor for filtering the corrected pixel representation, the multi-pipeline preprocessor generating a prioritized data stream of potential flaws; a run length encoder for generating location data regarding a location of each group of the potential flaws in a cross direction; a blob detector for generating block data regarding the location of blocks of the potential flaws along a machine direction; and an inspect/reject analyzer for determining actual flaw data from the prioritized data stream of potential flaws.