Transparent objects and the material defects they contain influence the direction of propagation of light passing through them. To detect defects, the complete light field must therefore be considered, i.e. not only the location but also the direction of propagation of the light rays. In Dr. Meyer's work, the light field concept was therefore integrated into the three main components of an inspection system - the illumination, image acquisition and image processing components. A newly developed sensor system, the laser deflection scanner, makes it possible to capture high-resolution light fields of transparent test specimens. Using appropriate evaluation algorithms, all material defects can be extracted from these light fields in real time. In addition, a method for inverse light field illumination was developed that suppresses all target structures of the test specimens and makes defects visible with high contrast. Extensive experiments have shown that the methods introduced are superior to the state of the art in various aspects.

The EMVA Young Professional Award is an annual prize that honors the exceptional and innovative work of students or young professionals in machine vision. The aim of the European Machine Vision Association (EMVA) is to further promote innovation in machine vision, to contribute to education in the machine vision discipline and to build a bridge between research and industry. With this award, the EMVA would like to encourage students in particular to focus on the technical challenges of machine vision and to apply the latest research results in machine vision to the practical requirements of industry. Dr. Meyer was announced at the 17th EMVA Business Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, where he was given the opportunity to present his work to the conference participants.

Dr. Johannes Meyer(31) completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree in computer science at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) from 2008 to 2014, after which he worked as a research assistant in close cooperation between the Chair of Interactive Real-Time Systems (IES) at KIT and the Visual Inspection Systems department at the Fraunhofer Institute of Optronics, System Technologies and Image Exploitation (IOSB). At the end of 2018, he was awarded a doctorate in engineering by the KIT Faculty of Computer Science for his research work and has been working at ITK Engineering in the field of computer vision ever since.