Double Buffering Line Scan Camera Technology

Decision Technology has many years experience with integrating line scan camera technology. Line scan cameras capture a single line of pixels at a time, thus the name line scan. Typical cameras range from 1024 to 8192 pixels per line. However recent advances in camera technology have significantly increased this upper pixel limit. A full 2-D image is obtained by clocking in a specified number of lines. This works well on cylindrical objects, spinning the object in front of the camera with proper clocking will result in a circumferential image of the surface of that object.

Early on we developed a double buffering technique that allows operate at high speeds. This technique allows an image of specified length to be accumulated while the previous image is being processed. This allows for no lost areas on continuous web applications. On web lines we have processed at speeds upward of 1100 feet/minute. This technique has also been used on our hi-speed clutch ring inspection systems allowing operational rates at close to 1.7 parts per second. We should point out that we also use double buffering techniques with area scan camera technology. Same principal, the processor is processing an image as the next image is being captured.