TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to present a novel image sensor technology for raised characters based on line structured‐light. It can convert raised character's three‐dimensional (3D) features into image's grayscale levels.Design/methodology/approach– The measurement principle and mathematical model are described. An experimental device is established and system parameters are calibrated. A grayscale conversion algorithm is proposed to convert the distortion of laser stripe to the grayscale intensity of image. The article also introduces a four‐factor method to assess the image quality of characters.Findings– Experimental results show that the method can get high‐contrast images of raised characters that are conventionally low‐contrast with the background. Besides, the method does not need complicated calibration and mass computation, which makes the system structure simple and increases the speed of image acquisition.Originality/value– The paper presents a novel image acquisition method for raised characters. VL - 33 IS - 2 SN - 0260-2288 DO - 10.1108/02602281311299671 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/02602281311299671 AU - Li Xueyong AU - Lu Changhou AU - Xiao Rujing AU - Zhang Jianchuan AU - Ding Jie PY - 2013 Y1 - 2013/01/01 TI - A novel image sensor for raised characters based on structured‐light T2 - Sensor Review PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 134 EP - 140 Y2 - 2024/03/19 ER -