Digital image analysis for fabric assessment

Conventional methods of fabric inspection are tedious and require close association. In this work, digital image analysis for fabric assessment (DIAFA) is applied to modem and historic fabrics. Fabric images are divided into arrays of pixels with peak intensities distributed over gray scale ranges (histograms) and along constructed lines (line profiles). Fabric cover is measured by segmenting a histogram's B/W pixels, yarn spacing, and yam thickness from moving point averages by calculating the breadth of a peak corresponding to an individual yam at half the maximum peak height for a given line profile. The results show very good agreement with known values (r = 0.919, n = 30, p < 0.01). Fourier power spectra provide facile measurements of yam parameters in close agreement with the results from line profiling. With DIAFA, a small tool kit is developed to assist in the objective analysis of the structural integrity of fabrics in the museum environment, and it could be very useful in advancing automated fabric inspection.