Volume measurement is an important process for various industries such as food processing, fruit and vegetable grading, etc. Value or price is often determined by the size of product. Product size can be measured optically with machine vision technology for on-line inspection and grading systems. Most optical grading techniques use a two-dimensional area projection or the weight of the product to estimate the actual product volume. These methods are subject to measurement inaccuracy because of the missing thickness information. We have introduced an algorithm combines laser triangulation technique with two-dimensional measurement to reconstruct a three-dimensional surface for volume measurement.

 Project Sponsors:

 Collaborators:

 Dr. Joseph Eifert, Virginia Tech
 Mr. Robert Lane, Virginia Tech
 Dr. Andy Chang, Youngstown State University

 Graduate Students:

 Ben Westover and Pengcheng Zhan

Publications:

1. D.J. Lee, J.K. Archibald, X. Xu, and P. Zhan, “Using Distance Transform to Solve Real-time Machine Vision Inspection Problems”, Machine Vision and Applications Journal, vol. 18/2, p. 85-93, April 2007.

2. D.J. Lee, J.D. Eifert, P. Zhan, and B.P. Westover, "Fast Surface Approximation for Volume and Surface Area Measurements Using Distance Transform, Optical Engineering", vol. 42/10, p. 2947-2955, October 2003.

3. D.J. Lee, B.P. Westover, and J.D. Eifert, "Three-dimensional Surface Approximation from Incomplete Data Using Distance Transform", SPIE Image Reconstruction from Incomplete Data II, vol. 4792, p. 125-134, Seattle, WA, USA, July, 2002. 

4. D.J. Lee, R.M. Lane, and G.H. Chang, "3-D Reconstruction for High-speed Volume Measurement", SPIE Machine Vision and Three-Dimensional Imaging Systems for Inspection and Metrology, vol. 4189, p. 258-267, Boston, MA, USA, November 2000.

(Click image to view paper poster)