Patent US 5,483,603

An optical inspection system for inspecting faults on circuit boards like printed circuit boards and wire scribed circuit boards is disclosed. A video camera for receiving desired images of hole sites on a wire circuit board is provided. The camera converts each image to electrical video signals. A frame grabber converts electrical video signals to a plurality of pixels and stores information representing color element values contained in each of the pixels. A panel feature detector receives the color element values of the pixel that has to be analyzed and provides a wire indication when the color element value of the pixel corresponds to the wire feature. A fault detector circuit receives the wire indication from the panel feature detector corresponding to predetermined pixels associated with the hole site for determining faults on the circuit board.