Abstract
PCB assurance currently relies on manual physical inspection, which is time consuming, expensive and prone to error. In this study, we propose a novel automated segmentation algorithm to detect and isolate PCB components called EC-Seg. Component segmentation and localization is a vital preprocessing step in the automation of component identification and authentication as well as the detection of logos and text markings. As test results indicate, EC-Seg is an efficient solution to automate quality assurance toolchains and also aid bill-of-material (BoM) extraction in PCBs. It also has the potential to be used as a region proposal algorithm for object detection networks and to facilitate sensor fusion involving artifact removal in PCB X-ray tomography.
