A portable symbology reader utilizing an anamorphic lens system. The anamorphic lens system allows a low cost, high volume CCD sensor to be used in a hand-held, point and shoot, portable imaging system. The anamorphic lens system provides vertical sensor resolution equal to the horizontal while providing a maximum field of view.

An optoelectronic device for identifying a mark having a defined contrast pattern includes a transmitting element for emitting a beam of transmitted light. A deflector unit periodically guides the transmitted light beam over the mark. A receiving element receives the transmitted light beam after being reflected by the mark and produces an analog received signal which exhibits an amplitude modulation impressed by the contrast pattern of the mark and is dependent on the spatial intensity distribution of the transmitted light beam. An n-bit analog-digital converter has a word width greater than 1 for converting the analog received signal into a digital received signal. A digital filter includes an input for receiving the digital received signal. The digital filter has different coefficient sets that are temporally changed, wherein the coefficients of each coefficient set are selected so that a transmission characteristic of the filter for each coefficient set essentially corresponds to an inverse of the frequency spectrum of the spatial intensity distribution of the transmitted light beam at a respectively different distance from the device.

A versatile system and method for VCSEL (vertical cavity surface emitting laser) bar code and data scanning is disclosed, including a housing (102) having a scanning surface (116), a detector element (106) disposed within the housing in close proximity and normal to the scanning surface, a VCSEL component (104) disposed within the housing in close proximity to the detector element and scanning surface, and an aperture (122) formed within the housing between the scanning surface and the detector element.

A system and method is provided for aligning and analyzing multiple images using Glass patterns. A Glass pattern is a Moire-like pattern obtained by superimposing an image on a transformed version of itself. The method includes superimposing the images to produce a first Glass pattern which has a determinable reference point, repositioning at least one of the images to produce a subsequent Glass pattern having a different reference point, and simultaneously aligning the reference points of each of the Glass patterns so as to align the images. The reference points are determined by any of a number of methods including the use of Fourier Transforms. In various embodiments of the invention, information obtained from the nature and quality of the Glass patterns produced is utilized for image analysis without aligning the images.

This invention uses an optical imaging system input to a computer to synthesize regularly spaced reference and test line patterns replicated from binarized edges taken from the optical images of structures to be aligned. The two patterns are then combined resulting in an interference pattern in which the spacing of moire fringes indicates the amount of movement of the structures required to bring them to a predetermined alignment. All of the procedures are observable on the interference display. These moire fringe pattern are a quantitative measure of angular alignment between the reference and test images and of the edges from the structures from which they were taken. An operator programmed and controlled template automatically processes moire edge alignment measurements. An automatic template processor generates a test sequence template from the chosen areas for measurement by the operator. A template memory module having a library of test sequence templates allows the process to be run without the selection of areas to be measured by the operator. Process imaging and logic operations are utilized in generating the automatic test sequence template.