1. A method for assessing nozzle health of a printhead nozzle array in a swath-type inkjet printing system, comprising: printing a swath portion of an image; optically scanning the printed swath portion to capture a scanned image; comparing an expected image of the swath portion of the image with the scanned image; based on results of said comparing, assessing whether any nozzles of the nozzle array have malfunctioned.