TOMOGRAPHIC RECONSTRUCTION OF ELECTRONIC COMPONENTS FROM SHADOW IMAGE SENSOR DATA

One aspect of the present invention includes a novel method of providing a set of vertices representative of the outline of an opaque object so that an outline of the object can be made from the set of vertices. The method includes the step of casting a shadow of the object onto a detector while the object is held at an angle and then detecting at least one edge of the shadow image. Once at least one of the edges in the shadow image is known, a data pair formed by the at least one shadow edge and its corresponding angle is preferably stored. The steps of casting and detecting are repeated until a plurality of data pairs is stored. Finally, a set of vertices is computed from the plurality of data pairs. An outline of the object can be made by plotting the set of vertices, for example, for use in viewing an outline of the object.