USB microscope works like normal USB webcam with the difference on the lens fixed on it which is used to magnify the object. It gives a low cost alternative for some inspection works, such as PCB inspection.

Using the Equalis Advanced Image and Video Processing Module, I've tested the USB microscope for some simple job --> object detection and counting.

With the RGB image input (640 x 480), which is resized to half of during processing, the first test running in real-time, in which the original image and the binary image after processing is shown side by side.

The source code shown as below:

// 1. Loading Background Image which has been captured before this load('Background.sod'); // Background image saved in variable R R = imresize(R,0.5); // Resize to half for speed n = camopen(3,[640 480]); se = imcreatese('ellipse',12,12); // Creating Structure Element for Morphological operation     // 2. Running for 200 frames, Frame rate not measured    for cnt = 1:200         im = avireadframe(n); // Read a frame from USB Microscope         im = imresize(im,0.5);  // Resize image to half of the size         drawlater();         S = rgb2gray(im);   // Convert image to grayscale         S_diff = imabsdiff(S,R);    // Compare the image with the background image         S_bin = im2bw(S_diff,imgraythresh(S_diff)); // Convert the difference image to binary         S2 = imopen(S_bin,se);  // Perform Imahe Opening         [S3,nn] = imlabel(im2double(S2));   // Labelling image         if  nn ~= 0 then             [Area, BB, ctr] = imblobprop(S3); // Find the object properties             imshow([S im2uint8(S2)]);   // Show image in cascade             imrects(BB,[255 0 0]);   // draw frame around detected objects             xtitle('Detected Object : ' + string(nn));          else             imshow([S im2uint8(S2)]);             xtitle('Detected Object : ' + '0');         end        drawnow();     end avicloseall();