A method for identifying and characterizing surface defects on an object by means of electronic
processing is described. The method comprises the following steps: acquiring, by means of a
microscope, at least one
microphotograph or
digital image of an object or a part of the object to be confirmed for the defect; then providing the acquired at least one
microphotograph or
digital image to an
algorithm trained by means of
artificial intelligence and / or
machine learning technology; a defect is then identified by a trained
algorithm and the identified defect is ascertained by means of a first
mask, and a first processed image is provided as an output of the trained
algorithm, in which the identified defect is ascertained by the first
mask. The method also provides for
processing the first processed
digital image by means of filtering and morphological closing operations for highlighting the edges of the defects in a cleaner and clearer manner and by means of segmentation operations adapted to highlight the individual defects visually confirmed in the image, a second processed image and a second processed
mask adapted to confirm the defect and highlight and characterize the contour and shape of the defect in an improved manner are obtained. The method further comprises the step of applying a
computer vision technique / algorithm to the aforementioned second processed image to determine characterization information for each of the detected defects. For each of the identified defects, this characterization information comprises at least the following information: a defect category, a position of the defect relative to a reference coordinate
system associated with the image, at least one geometric / dimensional parameter of each defect. The at least one trained algorithm is trained in a preliminary training step performed on training digital images, each of which is marked by means of marking a known defect and filtered to produce a mask corresponding as much as possible to the marked defect. A
system for detecting and characterizing defects on a
micrograph of an object is also described, which
system is capable of performing the above method.