Rock-type classification of an iron ore deposit using digital image analysis technique

In this paper, the rock types of an iron ore deposit were classified using the digital image analysis technique. The image acquisition and analysis of blasted rocks were conducted in a laboratory for six different rock types. A total of 189 features were extracted from the individual rock samples using best-suited segmentation technique selected by validation study. The neural network technique was applied for rock classification model using image features. Five principal components, which accounts for 95% of total data variance, were selected as input parameters for the model. The misclassification error of the model for testing data was 2.4%.