METHOD OF AND APPARATUS FOR OPTICAL IMAGING INSPECTION OF MULTI-MATERIAL OBJECTS AND THE LIKE

A novel method all of and apparatus for categorizing different material regions of an object-to-be inspected, by optical scanning of the object to produce a pixel image thereof, discriminating different pixel regions of the image corresponding to possibly different materials on the basis of color, and texture brightness measurements of the pixel regions and assigning preliminary likelihoods to such discrimination through with ambiguities; and comparing the measurements of the pixel regions with their local neighborhood surroundings in the image to assist in resolving said ambiguities and determining the material categorizations of the pixel regions with a high likelihood.