Hyperspectral Imaging for Industrial Inspection

Hyper­spec­tral ima­ging com­bi­nes spa­ti­al image infor­ma­ti­on with spec­tral mea­su­re­ment data. Ins­tead of recor­ding only colour or bright­ness, hyper­spec­tral sys­tems coll­ect spec­tral infor­ma­ti­on for every image pixel.

This enables indus­tri­al inspec­tion tasks whe­re visual­ly simi­lar mate­ri­als need to be distin­gu­is­hed by their che­mi­cal or phy­si­cal spec­tral characteristics.

Beyond Conventional Machine Vision

Con­ven­tio­nal RGB came­ras eva­lua­te visu­al pro­per­ties such as colour, size, shape and sur­face appearance.

Hyper­spec­tral ima­ging extends this approach by adding spec­tral infor­ma­ti­on. Mate­ri­als that look iden­ti­cal to the human eye or a stan­dard came­ra may show dif­fe­rent spec­tral behaviour.

Chemical Imaging

In hyper­spec­tral ima­ging, each pixel con­ta­ins spec­tral data. This allows the sys­tem to crea­te spa­ti­al­ly resol­ved che­mi­cal or mate­ri­al maps.

The result is not only an image of the object, but an inspec­tion result based on spec­tral dif­fe­ren­ces across the object surface.

Typical Industrial Use Cases

• Pla­s­tic sort­ing and recycling
• Detec­tion of for­eign materials
• Inspec­tion of coa­tings and layers
• Moni­to­ring of mate­ri­al distribution
• Inline qua­li­ty control
• Clas­si­fi­ca­ti­on of visual­ly simi­lar materials

From Model Development to HSI Deployment

Hyper­spec­tral sys­tems requi­re more than came­ra hard­ware. Relia­ble deploy­ment depends on sui­ta­ble illu­mi­na­ti­on, repre­sen­ta­ti­ve data­sets, che­mo­me­tric models and real-time processing.

Por­ta­ble spec­tro­sco­py and smal­ler-sca­le model deve­lo­p­ment can be used befo­re full HSI deploy­ment to redu­ce tech­ni­cal risk.

System Requirements

• Sui­ta­ble hyper­spec­tral came­ra and wave­length range
• Sta­ble illu­mi­na­ti­on concept
• Defi­ned sam­ple pre­sen­ta­ti­on or con­vey­or setup
• Vali­da­ted che­mo­me­tric model
• Real-time pro­ces­sing software
• Indus­tri­al inter­face for inspec­tion or sort­ing decisions

When Hyperspectral Imaging Is Appropriate

Hyper­spec­tral ima­ging is appro­pria­te when point mea­su­re­ments are not suf­fi­ci­ent and the appli­ca­ti­on requi­res spa­ti­al­ly resol­ved mate­ri­al information.

This is espe­ci­al­ly rele­vant when mate­ri­al dis­tri­bu­ti­on, sur­face varia­ti­on, con­ta­mi­na­ti­on or object-level sort­ing decis­i­ons need to be eva­lua­ted across an area rather than at a sin­gle mea­su­re­ment point.

Role in Industrial Spectral Systems

Hyper­spec­tral ima­ging is one deploy­ment opti­on within a broa­der indus­tri­al spec­tral sys­tem architecture.

It should be sel­ec­ted when the appli­ca­ti­on requi­res both spec­tral dis­cri­mi­na­ti­on and spa­ti­al resolution.