Using TDI camera with nonzero viewing angles for surface inspection

A variety of time delay and integration (TDI) arrays have been developed. The TDI image sensor offers significant improvement in performance over a linear CCD-sensor with respect to sensitivity. This is particularly significant in low level operations since the exposure time is increased by a factor which is equal to the number of the TDI stages in the sensor. Typically, the use of a TDI camera is restricted to cases where the surface is viewed from the direction of the surface normal. This is because the TDI-camera sensor has to be parallel to the viewed surface plane, in order to avoid a decrease of image quality due to varying magnification. However, in certain visual inspection applications it would be advantageous to use non-zero viewing angles. Three different solutions were tested and analyzes: a commercial shifting lens, standard lenses with an extension structure to support the lens in the shifting position and a commercial shifting and tilting lens. The results indicate that the TDI-camera can be used with viewing angles up to 30 degrees from the surface normal,which has been found to be the optimal viewing angle in some visual inspection applications.