Methods and systems for inspecting a vehicle

• US 10,162,077 B2
• Filed: 07/24/2015
• Issued: 12/25/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 09/02/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Nuctech Company Limited (Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd.), Tsinghua University
• Original Assignee: Nuctech Company Limited (Tsinghua Tongfang Co., Ltd.), Tsinghua University
• Inventors: Li, Jianmin, Zeng, Lei, Li, Qiang, Wei, Wen
• Primary Examiner(s): Dang, Duy M
• Application Number:
  US15/030,511
• Publication Number:
  US 20170160426A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,250 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2223/401 image processing
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 2223/408 display on monitor
• CPC Class Codes: G01N 23/04 and forming images of the material
• CPC Class Codes: G01V 5/22 Active interrogation, i.e. by irradiating objects or goods using external radiation sources, e.g. using gamma rays or cosmic rays
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 18/22 Matching criteria, e.g. proximity measures
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 7/10366 the interrogation device being adapted for miscellaneous applications
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/75 Organisation of the matching processes, e.g. simultaneous or sequential comparisons of image or video features; Coarse-fine approaches, e.g. multi-scale approaches; using context analysis; Selection of dictionaries
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 20/00 Scenes; Scene-specific elements control of digital cameras H04N23/60
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 2201/08 Detecting or categorising vehicles

Abstract

A method for inspecting a vehicle includes acquiring a unique identity number of an insepected vehicle, carrying out X-ray scanning on the inspected vehicle to acquire an X-ray image of the inspected vehicle, retrieving at least one historical inspected image related to the unique identity number from a historical inspection database, determining, based on one template image selection algorithm selected from multiple template image selection algorithms, one of the at least one historical inspected images as a template image, determining a difference region between the X-ray image and the template image, and presenting the difference region to a user.

Claims

1. A method for inspecting a vehicle, comprising steps of:

acquiring a unique identity number of an inspected vehicle;

carrying out X-ray scanning on the inspected vehicle to acquire an X-ray image of the inspected vehicle;

retrieving at least one historical inspected image related to the unique identity number from a historical inspection database;

determining, based on one template image selection algorithm selected from multiple template image selection algorithms, one of the at least one historical inspected image as a template image;

determining a difference region between the X-ray image and the template image;

presenting the difference region to a user, and

wherein the multiple template image selection algorithms are selected from the following image processing algorithms;

an average grey minimum method, a closest time method, a grey means square error minimum method, a local template method, and a probability template method.

2. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of determining a difference region between the X-ray image and the template image comprises:

registering the X-ray image with the template image; and

calculating a difference between the X-ray image and the template image which are registered.

3. The method according to claim 1, wherein the step of presenting the difference region to a user comprises:

highlighting the difference region in the X-ray image.

4. The method according to claim 1, wherein the X-ray image of the vehicle is aligned with the template image by using a rigid registration algorithm, solid deformation is reduced by using an elastic registration algorithm, and then a difference image between the two images is post-processed.

5. The method according to claim 1, further comprising steps of:

storing the unique identity number in a historical database in association with the X-ray image.

6. A system for inspecting a vehicle, comprising:

an identity (ID) acquisition unit configured to acquire a unique identity number of an inspected vehicle;

a radiation imaging system configured to carry out X-ray scanning on the inspected vehicle, to acquire an X-ray image of the inspected vehicle;

a storage device configured to store the X-ray image and a historical inspection database;

an image processing unit configured to retrieve at least one historical inspected image related to the unique identity number from the historical inspection database, determine, based on one template image selection algorithm selected from multiple template image selection algorithms, one of the at least one historical inspected image as a template image, and determine a difference region between the X-ray image and the template image; and

a display device configured to present the difference region to a user,

wherein the multiple template image selection algorithms are selected from the following image processing algorithms;

an average grey minimum method, a closest time method, a grey means square error minimum method, a local template method, and a probability template method.

7. The system according to claim 6, wherein the ID acquisition unit comprises:

a camera configured to capture a plate number image of the inspected vehicle; and

an identification unit configured to identify a plate number of the inspected vehicle from the plate number image.

8. The system according to claim 6, wherein the ID acquisition unit comprises:

a reader configured to read the ID of the inspected vehicle from a radio frequency tag carried by the inspected vehicle.

9. The system according to claim 6, wherein the display device is configured to highlight the difference region in the X-ray image, or display the difference region in the X-ray image and display no difference region in the X-ray image in an alternative manner at a certain frequency.