The invention provides a method for identifying or quantifying characteristics of interest of unknown objects, comprising training a single neural network model with training sets of known objects having known values for the characteristics; validating the optimal neural network model; and analyzing unknown objects having unknown values of the characteristics by imaging them to obtain a digital image comprising pixels representing the unknown objects, background and any debris; processing the image to identify, separate, and retain pixels representing the unknown objects from pixels and to eliminate background and debris; analyzing the pixels representing each of the unknown objects to generate data representative of image parameters; providing the data to the flash code deployed from the candidate neural network model; analyzing the data through the flash code; and receiving output data (the unknown values of the characteristics of interest of the unknown objects) from the flash code in a predetermined format.