Patent ID: 8116554

Claim:
A slicing machine for cutting slices from an end face of a food product mounted in the machine, wherein the machine includes a vision system arranged to view the end face during slicing and produce measurements relating to the area of the end face and of at least one constituent part of the product which is visible in the end face, and the vision system includes: an illumination arrangement for illuminating a region containing the end face with light of two different wavelengths; and a photosensitive device for producing a video signal representing an image of the illuminated region, wherein light of one wavelength is employed to generally uniformly illuminate the region, while light of the other wavelength is employed to produce a pattern of spaced apart parallel lines of light at least on the product end face, and the vision system is arranged to separate different components of the video signal corresponding to the two different wavelengths of illuminating light into a first image signal comprising only signal corresponding to the pattern and a second image signal comprising signal corresponding to the image produced by the generally uniform illumination, to determine information on the extent of the end face by processing the first image signal, to use this information to generate an electronic mask and to gate the second image signal using the electronic mask to leave a residual picture signal corresponding to the end face alone.