Machine vision for pharmaceutical and medical technology
Pharmaceutical production and medical technology place particularly high demands on quality, traceability and reproducible inspection processes.
Machine vision enables automated inspection at high speed - from the individual product to the secondary packaging.
Typical applications include completeness checks, defect detection, fill level, label inspection, OCR as well as barcode and DataMatrix reading.
Inspecting tablets and capsules
Vision systems can check:
- shape
- color
- damage
- completeness
- printing
Blister inspection
Typical checks include:
- Is the tablet present?
- Is it the wrong product?
- Is the tablet damaged?
- Is a pocket empty?
- Is the packaging damaged?
Ampoules, vials and bottles
Camera systems can:
- check fill levels
- inspect closures
- identify containers
- inspect labels
- detect defects
Code reading and serialization
Many prescription medicines in the EU must carry safety features on the outer packaging, including a unique identifier and an anti-tampering device.
Camera-based systems read and verify these machine-readable markings.
DataMatrix and GS1
GS1 DataMatrix is used in healthcare to make information machine-readable, such as:
- GTIN
- batch
- serial number
- manufacturing or expiry date
OCR and print inspection
Cameras inspect, for example:
- batch number
- expiry date
- part number
- plain text
- print quality
Packaging inspection
Vision systems can check:
- pack contents
- package insert
- label
- closure
- completeness
- damage
Medical technology
For medical devices, further applications are added, such as:
- UDI
- DPM
- assembly inspection
- surface inspection
- dimensional inspection
Typical components
- high-resolution industrial cameras
- smart cameras
- code readers
- macro and telecentric lenses
- diffuse lighting
- coaxial lighting
- UV lighting
- SWIR cameras
- frame grabbers