A fast segmentation method for high-resolution color images of foreign fibers in cotton

Foreign fibers in cotton seriously affect the quality of cotton products. The identification of foreign fibers in cotton is a critical step in the automated inspection of foreign fibers in cotton; image segmentation is crucial in this identification process. This paper presents a new approach for segmenting images of foreign fibers in cotton. Firstly, color images were captured, and the edge of color images were detected by an edge detection method based on improved mathematical morphology. The color images were subsequently converted into a gradient map, the law of experience values was analyzed, and the best thresholding value of the gradient map was chosen by selecting the best experience value iteratively. The experiment results indicate that the proposed method successfully segments the high-resolution color images of cotton foreign fibers both directly and precisely. Furthermore, the speed of image processing is much faster than that of conventional methods.

► The morphology’s method was improved by defining the edge detection operator.
► The selection of experience value by iterative thresholding method was fit for most color images of cotton foreign fibers.
► A high-resolution color image segmentation of cotton foreign fibers was completed by the proposed method.