A Nine-Part Video Course

Optics for Machine Vision

What is Light?

Part 1 of 9 (6:58)

For a long time, the nature of light baffled scientists. Many machine vision practitioners have misunderstandings about the nature of light that make it difficult to understand how light is working for them. This video explains, in plain language, what light is and what light is not.
Optics for Machine Vision

Properties of Light

Part 2 of 9 (10:35)

There are three properties of light energy that are critical to understanding the behavior of light: spectrum, coherence, and polarization. This video explains each of these properties.
Optics for Machine Vision

Light in Action

Part 3 of 9 (11:05)

When light interacts with a material, three things can happen: reflection, absorption, and transmission. Each of these three effects may be different depending on the material. This video explains the three actions and the ways they might vary with material.
Optics for Machine Vision

Advanced Topics About Light

Part 4 of 9 (18:58)

This video goes deeper into reflection, absorption, and transmission to explain light behaviors that may otherwise baffle the machine vision practitioner. The video also gives more details about the polarization of light. Finally, the video explains diffraction and interference that have important impacts on light and how it behaves in machine vision systems.
Optics for Machine Vision

How Color is Sensed

Part 5 of 9 (15:09)

Color as a property of light relates to its wavelength. As something that humans and machine vision sense, it’s a bit different. This video explores how humans and machine vision cameras sense color and two different ways that color can be represented.
Optics for Machine Vision

The Measurement of Light

Part 6 of 9 (9:15)

This video describes the different ways that light is measured as well as the three different systems of measurement. There is some confusion and misunderstanding in how light is measured and which measurement is appropriate for a particular circumstance. This overview helps clear the confusion and minunderstandings.
Optics for Machine Vision

How Images are Formed

Part 7 of 9 (9:50)

This video describes the basics of how images are formed by lenses. The discussion starts with the pinhole as an imaging device and then introduces the concepts of the lens. It introduces the basic lens equations that are important in machine vision work.
Optics for Machine Vision

The Resolving Power of a Lens

Part 8 of 9 (12:41)

The resolving power of a lens is critically important in machine vision. Yet, it is something that many people do not understand. This video illustrates the factors that determine the resolving power of a lens and how that resolving power is described by the modulation transfer function.
Optics for Machine Vision

More Lens Characteristics

Part 9 of 9 (7:06)

This video discusses four important lens characteristics for imaging: depth-of-field, the Scheimpflug condition, cosine to the fourth power effect, and the optical invariant.
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