Fast multi-template matching using a particle swarm optimization algorithm for PCB inspection

Template matching is one of the image comparison techniques which is widely applied to determine the existence and location of a component within a captured image in the printed circuit board (PCB) industry. In this research, an efficient auto-detection method using a multi-template matching technique for PCB components detection is described. In many cases, the run time of template matching applications is dominated by repeating the similarity calculation, locating multi-templates, and exploring of the optimum result. A new approach using accelerated species based particle swarm optimization (SPSO) for multi-template matching (MTM) is proposed. To test its performance, our proposed SPSO-MTM algorithm is compared with other approaches by using the real captured PCB image. The SPSO-MTM method is proven to be superior to the others in both efficiency and effectiveness.