System and method for creating a knowledge base

Abstract

A system and method for object inspection that includes an image recognition program stored on a tangible medium for classifying and subclassifying regions of interest on an image. The image recognition program can be used in an image inspection system to determine defects on objects such as printed wiring assemblies. The image recognition program is executable to collect raw image data, segment out rectangular regions of interest that can be component sites defined by CAD data, preprocess each region of interest by scaling, gain and offset correction, and gamma correction, generating a set of image spaces for each region of interest using a set of spatial image transforms, generating features on the image spaces, scoring the features, comparing the feature scores to a knowledge base of feature scores to make a class determination for the features, generating a presence/absence decision confidence for the features, calculating a class determination and decision confidence for each region of interest. The class determinations can include present or absent, and right or wrong polarity. Another aspect of the image recognition software includes the ability to subclassify the defects. Another aspect of the present invention includes the ability to incrementally train the existing knowledge base as more images are processed.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.