Patent ID: 6909816

Claim:
A sensor data processing system for processing video data input from a camera aimed into the interior of a boiler and operating in the infra-red band, comprising: an image pre-processing circuit in which a 2-D image formed by said video data input is captured, and including a low pass filter for performing noise filtering of said video input, and having an image system compensation system for array compensation to correct for pixel variation and dead cells, etc., and geometric distortion is corrected; an image segmentation module for receiving a cleaned image sent from said image pre-processing circuit for separating said image of said recovery boiler interior into background, pendant tubes, and deposition, and for accomplishing thresholding/clustering on gray scale/texture and making morphological transforms to smooth regions, and for identifying regions by connected components; an image understanding unit for receiving a segmented image sent from said image segmentation module and for matching derived regions to a 3-D model of said boiler, and for deriving a 3-D structure the deposition on pendant tubes in said boiler is inferred.