Enhanced traceability for pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers

28 October 2009

Industrial Vision Systems has launched NeuroCheck 6.0, the most capable vision system available today. Reengineered from the ground up, it offers pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers dramatic improvements in inspection processing, manufacturing integration and audit tracking as well as support for the latest high-resolution colour digital cameras and multi-core CPUs.

Enhanced traceability for pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers

NeuroCheck is an integrated software application used for inspection, guidance, identification, metrology, tracking and counting in mission-critical inspection systems. The system boasts a diverse global blue chip client list of healthcare, pharmaceutical and medical engineering companies that includes GlaxoSmithKline, Becton Dickinson, Johnson & Johnson, Bespak and GE Healthcare. NeuroCheck 6.0 represents the culmination of 5 years of development and incorporates over 2,000 suggestions from customers and business partners.
With the release of NeuroCheck 6.0, the best just got better, states Christian Demant, Director of IVS. The all-new data communication centre significantly extends factory integration opportunities, enhancing manufacturing traceability for pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, the user interface has been completely revised and made touchscreen ready, and all internal algorithms are multi-core, multi-threaded to support 24-bit colour image processing.
The new data communication centre’s support for Fieldbus and Industrial Ethernet as standard allows dynamic target measurement values to be provided across these networks as well as from files. Equally, these networks can be used for output of actual and target values in XML, CSV, text and user-defined formats for integration into quality control and GxP systems, and the event log viewer provides continuous activities documentation to support FDA 21 CFR Part 11 compliance. The data communication centre also simplifies integration with PLC controllers used in production line automation.
New image processing algorithms allow faster solution creation and more precise evaluations. All functions process colour data, updated check functions incorporate numerous new geometric characteristics and calculation rules, and barcode processing supports a wider range of 2D and 1D formats, allowing engineers to build solutions quicker and more accurately. 24-bit colour processing is carried through template matching, supported with a new template definition wizard. Modern multi-core processor support further improves performance, particularly for fast cameras connected via GigE and FireWire B (IEEE 1394b) interfaces.
The user interface has been completely revised and optimised for working with large images from today’s high-resolution cameras. In manual mode, parameter dialogues are resizable, all image displays allow arbitrary zoom with an overview window for easy navigation. Radical development of the automatic mode has introduced separate control panel and process view windows.
Touchscreen ready, the control panel is the operating centre, providing a compact overview of the inspection process, whilst the process view allows more detailed information to be displayed, such as evaluation results, intermediate images or accumulated statistical values. Multi-threading ensures rapid updating of output windows and better hardware resource utilization.
A cornerstone of NeuroCheck’s philosophy from day one has been to remove any need for the applications engineer to understand traditional programming when building solutions. This is carried through NeuroCheck 6.0’s new designer toolkit that allows engineers to completely redesign both user interface views. Using simple drag-and-drop actions, the engineer can fine-tune the standard user interface or fully realise his company’s corporate design - even minimise operator training by recreating a user interface already in use.