Speed without special hardware
Using off-the-shelf imaging hardware, Sentinel finds patterns in a matter of milliseconds. Sentinel supports fast image acquisition using PCI-bus frame grabbers with transfer rates as high as 90 Megabytes per second. OCR speeds run at a fraction of a millisecond per character on a Pentium-class machine. Intelligent search tools and user-defined search windows let you tune the speed to your requirements.

Accurate and reliable
Optimas Sentinel allows you to measure the quality of a pattern so you can make pass/fail decisions. You can set quality thresholds to accept or reject any feature. You can also perform correlation on any pattern and return a correlation coefficient. Pattern matching results remain consistent as lighting conditions change.

Highly flexible
Sentinel is the most flexible pattern recognition software available today. You can train and test patterns in minutes. You can easily combine multiple patterns in a single application. Pattern files can be transformed to detect features at any angle of orientation, accommodate changes in scale, or correct the aspect ratio of an image. If you want to make a pattern more robust simply add more examples to the pattern file. Using the Sentinel DLL you can embed pattern recognition in your custom applications written in Visual Basic or C++.

Prototype without programming
Sentinel includes a revolutionary Computer Aided Software Engineering (CASE) program for building applications. With CASE you can build a complex application by simply dragging and dropping search tasks in the order you want them performed. The CASE toolbar includes powerful tools for acquiring images, finding patterns, and testing results. Each tool pops up a property sheet that lets you set options to control the behavior of the tool You can draw arrows from one task to another to create looping structures or control the flow of search results. Even users who have no prior experience with software development can easily prototype applications using Sentinel CASE.

Provide the finishing touch with the tool of your choice
Any program produced by CASE can be controlled using only 15 DLL function calls. You can create a user interface for any CASE program using Visual Basic, Delphi, or Visual C++. Example programs let you cut-and-paste code from our application to yours. You can embed a CASE program as a component of a larger, more complex program or system. CASE programs are very easy to work with because they are small and efficient.