Imaging method for determining stray fibers
The present invention is directed to a method of detecting stray fibers emanating from a substrate comprising: a) Taking an image or a series of consecutive images of stray fibers in front of a contrasted background, that is created using one or more light sources, using a digital device; b) Segmenting of stray fibers and background from objects not directly contrasted against the background resulting in a binary image mask; c) Applying an edge detection technique to the image or modification of original image to enhance contrast of stray fibers against the background; and Applying the binary image mask from step b) to an image created in step c) to create an image in which only the stray fibers and/or outline of any other object contrasted against the background are present.
1. A method of detecting stray fibers emanating from a substrate comprising:
a) Taking an image or a series of consecutive images of stray fibers in front of a contrasted background, that is created using one or more light sources, using a digital device;
b) Segmenting of stray fibers and background from objects not directly contrasted against the background resulting in a binary image mask;
c) Applying an edge detection technique to the image from 1a) or modification of the image of 1a) to enhance contrast of stray fibers against the background;
d) Applying the binary image mask from step b) to an image created in step c) to create an image in which the stray fibers and/or outline of any other object contrasted against the background are present.
2. Method of claim 1 wherein step b) the segmentation technique is a single threshold constant or combination of threshold constants that define intensity ranges.
3. Method of claim 1 wherein step c) the edge detection technique is a Laplacian, Canny, Sobel, Robertson, Prewitt, high pass filtering or any other type of edge detection filter.
4. Method of claim 1 wherein step d) is followed by manipulating the stray fiber image by adjusting one or more of the following parameters; gamma, contrast, brightness to enhance the appearance the stray fibers against the background pixels.
5. Method of claim 1 wherein step d) is followed by segmenting of the image to enhance the appearance the stray fibers against the background pixels.
6. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber image or a further manipulated version of the stray fiber image is used as a basis for quantifying the amount of stray fibers in the image.
7. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber image or a further manipulated version of the stray fiber image is used as a basis for performing additional visualizations of the original image.
8. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fibers are from the group consisting of hair, fabrics, cellulosic substrate, non-cellulosic and mixtures thereof.
9. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair is attached to a person.
10. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair is a hair tress.
11. Method of claim 10 wherein the hair tress is a braided tress.
12. Method of claim 1 step a) wherein the device is a color or monochrome digital camera that can be used to capture video or still images.
13. Method of claim 1 step a) wherein a color of the background is chosen to be different than the color of any other objects not directly contrasted against the background.
14. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber has a diameter of 0.25 inches or less.
15. Method of claim 1 wherein the one or more light sources can be in a position selected from the group consisting of front, side, top, bottom, back or mixtures thereof.
16. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair or hair tress is twisted/rotated.
17. Method of claim 1 , wherein object not directly contrasted against the background is masked out by a mask that is drawn manually or automatically added should the position and approximate size of the object be known.