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news
Pharma QC enforced with optical inspection
Marlin camera meets the tough requirements. ‘We’re very satisfied with the camera. It gives us sharp images that are indispensable for reliable evaluation.’ The system was positioned in
Pharmaceutical corporation Boehringer Ingelheim has installed a vision system providing 100 per cent testing of medication capsules. Boehringer Ingelheim designed
an optical testing facility to ensure exactly 5.5mg of powder medication, used to treat respiratory disease, is loaded into gelatine capsules. Developed in-house under the direction of Dr Peter Stöckel, a senior scientist at Boerhinger, it uses
digital cameras from Allied Vision Technologies (AVT). The most important challenge
for the testing mechanism is speed. ‘At an output of 80,000 capsules per hour, one capsule leaves the filling machine every 45ms,’ said Dr Stöckel. For the camera, this means that 22 capsules per second must be captured. To avoid motion blur, the exposure time cannot exceed 80µs. According to Dr Stöckel, the AVT
news From emVA By Patrick schwarzkopf
Vision 2010, the international trade fair for machine vision, is getting closer and the EMVA will be present with numerous activities. The seventh International Vision Night will once again be the perfect start for Vision (8 November, 7pm). More than 150 participants from 20 countries are expected to join us for an evening of networking, conversation and establishing contacts. Enjoy food, drinks and the casual atmosphere at the Restaurant Mezzogiorno conveniently located in the city centre of Stuttgart. The EMVA booth will be located opposite the Forum Industrial Vision Days in hall 6 (B 74). The EMVA will also be presenting at the Industrial
Vision Days, with three talks: Andreas Breyer, EMVA director of market research, will speak on ‘The European Machine Vision Market’ on Wednesday, 10 November (9:15am-9:30am); Professor Dr Bernd Jähne, chair of the EMVA 1288 Working Group, will give a presentation entitled ‘Objective monochrome and colour camera characterisation – the new EMVA 1288 standard, release 3’ on 10 November (9:30am-10:00am); and Dr Friedrich Dierks, chair of the EMVA GenICam Working Group, will present on ‘GenICam: the standardised unified programming interface for cameras’, on 10 November (1pm-1.30pm). Finally, the EMVA will be
holding a special exhibition on international machine vision standards. Standards are becoming increasingly important for the machine vision industry. The Special Exhibition on Standardization is a joint initiative of the Vision show, the EMVA, the AIA and the JIIA. Visitors will be able to speak directly with the developers and members of the standardisation working groups and will see numerous demonstrators. The GenICam and the EMVA 1288 standardisation groups will present their current work. Further standardisation initiatives such as GigE Vision, Camera Link, CoaXPress, Lens Mount and Lighting Standards will also be presented.
the assembly process after the filling and before the sealing of the capsules. After filling, the content of each still-open capsule is imaged from above. The filling machine’s clock pulse triggers a Marlin F-046B camera from AVT and its dedicated LED flash unit – not via the PC, but directly via the camera’s external trigger input. The half-capsule is then illuminated from below using an LED. Since the camera cannot be housed over the capsules that are travelling past, it captures their contents via a tilted mirror on the side. Image analysis was internally programmed by Boehringer Ingelheim based on NI LabView 7.1 by National Instruments.
Imaging probe to enhance skin cancer
diagnosis A collaboration between researchers at King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre and British company Michelson Diagnostics is targeting skin cancer with a new type of imaging probe. The aim of the project is to develop and test a hybrid imaging probe that combines the advantages of Michelson Diagnostics’ novel Multi-Beam OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography) probe with a visual camera. The OCT and visual images from the hybrid probe will be combined to provide enhanced diagnostic information to clinicians. Project leader Dr Andrew Coleman, consultant medical physicist at Guy’s and St Thomas’, explained the benefits of the hybrid probe: ‘When interpreting OCT images of sub-surface tissue, it really helps if you know exactly where on the lesion you are scanning, and the hybrid probe will enable this.’ Dr Katie Lacy, consultant dermatologist at Guy’s and St Thomas’, who is leading the clinical validation of the hybrid probe, said: ‘This new instrument will allow dermatologists to view not only the surface appearance of skin cancer but, for the first time, to also examine the structures under the skin in the clinic.’
Michelson Diagnostics has delivered a state-of-the-art VivoSight OCT skin scanner to Guy’s Hospital for the project, and the lesions of 93 patients have already been scanned and are being analysed. The scanner will be modified to incorporate the hybrid probe, and then more patients will be able to benefit from these enhanced scanning techniques.
imaging and machine vision europe october/november 2010
www.imveurope.com
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