Development of an objective fabric pilling evaluation method. I. Characterization of pilling using image analysis

An objective evaluation method for woven fabric pilling has been developed using image processing and statistical analysis. Five ASTM photographic standard images were analyzed to determine a characterization method for fabric pilling. Images were filtered by various image analysis techniques such as fast Fourier transformation (FFT) and fast wavelet transformation (FWT). Three parameters including the number of pills, the total pixel area of pilling, and the sum of the gray values of pill images have been defined and extracted automatically from the images. Finally, the relationship between pilling grade and those parameters has been established by a series of statistical analyses.