On the development of an effective image acquisition system for diamond quality grading

In this paper, an effective diamond image acquisition system is proposed for capturing images of the diamond sample under inspection separately with transmitted and reflected light. The proposed system consists of two parts: a lighting system and an imaging system. The lighting system is a newly designed integrating sphere that can control the light distribution in the image plane and provide uniform illumination to the diamond sample while it is being inspected under white LED lamps with a specific spectral power distribution. The imaging system comprises industrial-grade lenses, cameras, and a sample loading plate. One set of lenses and a camera is installed at the port of the lower hemisphere. This arrangement ensures that all light rays illuminated to the image plane are transmitted light. On the other hand, all light captured by the other set of lenses and a camera installed on the upper hemisphere is reflected light. The proposed design utilizes the ray tracing processing method based on the physical properties of materials and adjusts the parameters of each optical component. When properly designed, the signal-to-noise ratio of captured diamond images is significantly improved, so that imperfections inside the diamond or on its surface can be clearly distinguished. The proposed image acquisition system is cost-effective and compact. The experimental results agree well with the theoretical analysis and verify the effectiveness of the proposed image acquisition system. The proposed system will facilitate, improve, and simplify automated diamond quality grading.