Vision system speeds stent inspection
FEBRUARY 13, 2009--Based on a high-resolution linescan camera, the CTR Carinthian Tech (Villach, Austria; www.ctr.at) Research StentIntegrity System records only a line rather than a two-dimensional image of an object in one frame. By rotating the stent a flat, unrolled view of the stent is generated.
To achieve this, the stent is fixed on a stent holder of a multiaxis mechanical system which rotates the stent while the camera is recording the stent line-by-line. Additionally, to account for a variety of different stent dimensions the stent can be aligned with respect to the camera by a 3-D translational transport system.
The result of this scanning process is a detailed picture of the stent, which is then processed by a set of image-processing algorithms to detect several kinds of defects of the structure or surface in comparison to definable references. A few seconds after the scanning has finished the stent image is displayed on a computer. For more information, go to: http://www.ctr.at/carinthian_tech_research_english/systemloesungen/stent.php?navid=13