Abstract: A color optical inspection system extracts only such luma and chroma spatial features as are necessary for detection of defects related to the physical characteristics of devices populating the surface of a board. During the training phase, the features of each device present on each of a number of golden boards is extracted and compared against a set of established criteria, thereby to select one or more spatial features to be extracted for the associated devices during the inspection phase. A match region whose boundaries are defined by the selected features of the devices on the golden boards is established during the training phase. During the inspection phase, the selected features of each associated device are extracted to determine whether they fall inside the match region. If the extracted features falls outside the corresponding match region, then a defect is reported.