Flaw detection is one of the most fundamental machine vision tasks. Essential to quality control, machine vision allows manufacturers to find contamination, scratches, cracks, blemishes, discoloration, gaps, pits, and other unacceptable flaws via nondestructive methods. Setting up flaw detection is not without its challenges. Manufacturers must work with engineers to quantify and qualify potential flaws, in order to create a system that provides reliable and repeatable results.

The first challenge is determining the nature of potential flaws that a machine vision system must identify.