Lighting and detection system

摘要

A backlighting system is comprised of a light source, a sensing portion and an imaging portion. The light source may be a linear backlight that has few hot spots and provides uniform lighting oriented primarily in a single dimension. Alternatively it may be an area backlight that provides backlighting in a uniform manner across two-dimensions. Furthermore, a line light source may be provided that provides a relatively large line source of light oriented almost exclusively in a single dimension. The imaging portion of the machine vision system preferably includes an element for homogenizing the received image onto the imaging array. The homogenization element may adopt either a dispersing approach or a condensing approach.