Rapid Defect Inspection of Display Device with Optical Spatial Filtering

We present a fast inspection method of machine vision for in-line quality assurance of liquid crystal displays(LCD) and plasma display panels(PDP). The method incorporates an optical spatial filter in the Fourier plane of the imaging optics to block the normal periodic pattern, extracting only defects real time without relying on intensive software image process. Special emphasis is on designing a collimated white light source to provide high degree of spatial coherence for effective real time Fourier transform. At the same time, a low level of temporal coherence is attained to improve defect detection capabilities by avoiding undesirable coherent noises. Experimental results show that the proposed inspection method offers a detection accuracy of 15% tolerance, which is sufficient for industrial applications.