Image processing techniques for quality inspection of gelatin capsules in pharmaceutical applications

Machine vision systems provide quality control and real-time feedback for industrial processes, overcoming physical limitations and subjective judgment of humans. In this paper, the image processing techniques for developing low-cost machine vision system for pharmaceutical capsule inspection is explored. By developing image processing techniques, and using PCs, custom USB 2.0 cameras with minimal hardware, a low-cost flexible system is developed. This paper discusses the two-part gelatin capsule inspection system that belongs to USB camera 2.0 and associated hardware, the PCs to acquire the image data of the capsule, image processing techniques using border tracing and approximating the capsule to a circle to perform inspection and a custom system controller to pass the accepted and rejected capsules to the appropriate bin.