Compared to manual inspection, vision systems deploying area-scan cameras offer improved accuracy and far higher consistency. Plus, they work nonstop without suffering fatigue or requiring a paycheck. For all their advantages, however, there are limitations to area-scan cameras in more challenging machine vision tasks. For example, if the object under inspection is large, if it is continuously moving, or if the task requires high resolution without blurring, a line-scan camera is a far better choice.
Area-scan cameras have a square or rectangular sensor that captures an image all in one go. The resulting image has a width and height corresponding to the number of pixels on the sensor. Because of this, area-scan cameras are ideal for many machine vision tasks, where the objects are small and having almost the same size in both dimensions. However, the size of PCBs, LCD panels and wafers has increased beyond the speed, accuracy, and resolution capabilities of area-scan cameras, making line-scan cameras a better choice for inspecting these objects.