Battery component inspection based on optical and thermal imaging

A method of inspecting a battery component, comprising:

• acquiring an optical image of a surface of the battery component and a thermal image of the surface, wherein at least one of the optical image and the thermal image is taken when the surface is heated to a selected temperature;
• correlating the thermal image with the optical image;
• identifying a feature of interest in at least one of the optical image and the thermal image, and determining a geometric characteristic and a temperature characteristic associated with the feature of interest;
• and
• determining whether the feature of interest is a defect based on the geometric characteristic and the temperature characteristic, wherein the determining includes, based on the feature of interest being a micro-scale feature, performing an elemental analysis of a portion of the surface having the micro-scale feature to generate an image representing elemental concentration, and comparing a pattern of the elemental concentration to a corresponding pattern in the thermal image.

A computer program product for inspecting a battery component, the computer program product that has computer-executable instructions stored thereupon on a non-transitory computer-readable medium, the computer-executable instructions when executed by a processor cause the processor to perform operations comprising:

• acquiring an optical image of a surface of a battery component and a thermal image of the surface, wherein at least one of the optical image and the thermal image is taken when the surface is heated to a selected temperature;
• correlating the thermal image with the optical image;
• identifying a feature of interest in at least one of the optical image and the thermal image, and determining a geometric characteristic and a temperature characteristic associated with the feature of interest;
• and
• determining whether the feature of interest is a defect based on the geometric characteristic and the temperature characteristic, wherein the determining includes, based on the feature of interest being a micro-scale feature, performing an elemental analysis of a portion of the surface having the micro-scale feature to generate an image representing an elemental concentration, and comparing a pattern of the elemental concentration to a corresponding pattern in the thermal image.