CC BY 4.0Heizmann, MichaelMichaelHeizmannLängle, ThomasThomasLängle2025-06-132025-06-132025-06-04https://doi.org/10.24406/publica-4775https://publica.fraunhofer.de/handle/publica/48861910.1515/teme-2025-007610.24406/publica-4775In many technical fields as well as in daily life, acquiring sensory information about objects, scenes, or the surrounding environment is essential. This is particularly important in areas such as quality assurance and sensor-based sorting for evaluating product quality, environmental sensing for robotics and autonomous vehicles, and numerous other tasks in measurement and automation technology. Machine vision systems offer significant advantages in these applications compared to other sensing methods or human inspection. Image acquisition-the core of the observation process-is non-contact, and the data captured is rich in information due to their multi-dimensional nature. Furthermore, a wide range of imaging techniques can be employed to reveal diverse and highly informative aspects of a scene. A distinguishing feature of machine vision is its emulation of the human visual system-the most dominant human sensory modality-enabling many image processing techniques to be intuitively understood by humans. Unlike human vision, however, technical image acquisition systems are not constrained by biological limitations such as spectral sensitivity, temporal response, spatial and temporal resolution, reproducibility, objectivity, or susceptibility to fatigue. Furthermore, cameras and digital imaging have become pervasive in everyday life, as evidenced by the widespread use of smartphones equipped with more and more high-performance cameras. This ubiquity has driven significant advancements in sensor technologies and image processing algorithms, which, in turn, have accelerated the development and deployment of machine vision systems in technical and industrial applications. Seen from a scientific point of view, machine vision systems integrate components from a wide range of disciplines-including optics,enillumination engineeringsensor technologysignal processingsystems theorycomputer scienceand information technology -whichjournal article