Image enhancement through intelligent localized fusion operators in the automated visual inspection of highly reflective surfaces

The selection of a suitable illumination subsystem is seldom practicable in the automated visual inspection of highly reflective surfaces. The paper presents an algorithmical approach in the form of a framework for enhancing images of objects with such surfaces. This framework is based on the application of so-called Intelligent Localized Fusion Operators (ILFOs), whose formalization is herein undertaken for the first time. Furthermore the guidelines for its implementation are given and different aspects of the resulting pre-processing system are systematically analyzed. The framework successfully performs in the automated visual inspection of different objects presenting highly reflective surfaces, namely headlamp reflectors, plastic bundled packages, and electric bulbs.