Automatic defect inspection system of colour filters using Taguchi-based neural network

A coloured filter is a critical part of an LCD panel, especially to present a high quality colour display. At present, the defect detection of colour filters is conducted by manual inspection in the final product stage. However, poor detection efficiency and subjective judgment of manual inspection undermine accuracy. Therefore, this study applied image processing technology and the neural network to detect surface defects of colour filters in order to prevent losses arising from incorrect detection, lower production costs, and effectively improve yield. A back-propagation neural network (BPNN) classifier was selected to train the features. The results showed that the proposed method can be successfully applied in defect detection of colour filters to reduce artificial detection errors. In addition, the Taguchi method was used with BPNN to save time searching optimal learning parameters by the trial and error method, which achieves faster convergence, smaller convergent errors and better recognition rate. The results proved that the root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the Taguchi-based BPNN at final convergence is 0.000254, and recognition rate reaches 94%. Therefore, the proposed method has good effects in detecting the micro defects of a colour filter panel.