Automatic optical inspection system for IC solder joint based on local-to-global ensemble learning

Purpose Automatic optical inspection (AOI) systems have been widely used in many fields to evaluate the qualities of products at the end of the production line. The purpose of this paper is to propose a local-to-global ensemble learning method for the AOI system based on to inspect integrated circuit (IC) solder joints defects. Design/methodology/approach In the proposed method, the locally statistically modeling stage and the globally ensemble learning stage are involved to tackle the inspection problem. At the former stage, the improved visual background extraction–based algorithm is used for locally statistically modeling to grasp tiny appearance differences between the IC solder joints to achieve potential defect images for the subsequent stage. At the latter stage, mean unqualified probability is introduced based on a novel ensemble learning, in which an adaptive weighted strategy is proposed for revealing different contributions of the base classifier to the inspection performance. Findings Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves better inspection performance with an acceptable inspection time compared with some state-of-the-art methods. Originality/value The approach is a promising method for IC solder joint inspection, which can simultaneously grasp the local characteristics of IC solder joints and reveal inherently global relationships between IC solder joints.