What is image analysis? The term is widely used over a variety of technology disciplines, and has varying meanings. To define image analysis within machine vision, take a moment first to consider the broad scope of the typical industrial inspection or guidance application. Digital cameras or other complex sensors are integrated with lenses or specialized optics along with dedicated light sources to capture a picture or representation of an object. By various means, the picture might be manipulated to enhance and optimize the content. Specialized software tools are used to extract information from features in the picture. Ultimately, that information is provided to the automated process for tasks like guidance, measurement, or quality assurance.
These important steps within a successful machine vision application can be grouped into general operational categories. The terms image acquisition, image processing, image analysis, and results processing often are used to describe the four actions mentioned above. (Although the terminology certainly makes sense for machine vision, bear in mind that these designations are only loosely used, and can take on different meanings depending on context.) In this tutorial we will focus on image analysis, and will cover just a few of the very basic concepts of this broad and important part of machine vision technology and software.