Method and device for examining components with data digitized into a large number of gray levels

摘要

A method and device for processing and representing data corresponding to defects in a part, wherein an initial image is discretized into a plurality of image points and the intensity at each point is digitized by gray level, for display on a monitor. For a monochrome monitor, for which the number of distinguishable gray levels generally corresponds to 8-bits, the number of gray levels in the above digitization is greater, for instance 12 or 16 bits, and the entire image is not displayed simultaneously but rather over a display cycle. At any one instant in the cycle, one or more parts of the image is displayed, the full range of gray scales of the monochrome monitor mapping at that time to a sub-range of the levels of gray of the digitization process. Thus the operator can perceive a large number of gray levels. For a color monitor, digitized data of all the gray scales can be represented by assigning each gray level to a corresponding color. Since there are generally more colors available than the number of gray levels, criteria can be used to eliminate candidate colors. The assignment of colors to gray levels is performed in a manner to allow an observer to perceive the succession of light to dark in the gray scales, namely by an appropriate corresponding succession between distinguishable colors.