NTC Project: S01-PH07 (formerly I01-P07)"

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On Line Weight and Shrinkage Control of Cotton Knits

NTC Project: S01-PH07 (formerly I01-P07)
http://facult.philau.edu/abouiianam/NTC

Leader:

Mohamed Abou-iiana, Philadelphia University, Abouiinam@philau.edu

Members:
Chris Pastore, Philadelphia University, PastoreC@Philau.edu
C. Beevers, Philadelphia University, BeeveersC@Philau.edu
Y. Gowayed, Auburn University, Ygowayed@eng.auburn.edu
Graduate Students:
Ebraheem Shady, Auburn University
Introduction

The first attempts of using computer vision for industrial applications started in the early
70’s [1]. At that time, the cost of computing power was a limiting factor in the
development of efficient techniques for image analysis. But today the advent of low cost
digital computers and increased computing power significantly encouraged further
development in the field, especially in the area of fabric detection to reduce the
dependence of human inspectors in this subjective, tedious, and time consuming process.
Recent advances in imaging technology and image processing have also resulted in
inexpensive, high quality image acquisition, and pattern recognition. This situation made
automated image-based inspection an attractive alternative to human inspection [2].

One of the early considerations of the use of computers in the inspection of fabrics was
carried out in SIRA institute by Purll in 1970 [3] opening the way to further utilization of
image processing in textile quality control and analysis. This included evaluation of trash
content in the cotton fiber [4] and evaluation of blend irregularity in blended yarns [5]. In
detecting and classifying defects, image analysis has been used extensively, especially for
the woven fabric defects [6-17].

Many researchers in the field of image analysis used neural network as a classifier [10,
15-19]. In these approaches, the data of the images is reduced, in one form or another, to
accelerate the processing time. Techniques used to extract image features include
statistical procedures [13, 15, 17], time-frequency domain transforms such as Discrete
Cosine Transform [13, 15], Fourier Transform [8, 11, 12, 15-17] and Wavelet Transform
[11].

The goal of this work is to build an image classifier routine that is able to detect and
classify knitted fabric defects. Two approaches of features extraction were used - one is
based on a statistical procedure and the other is on Fourier Transform.

Image Acquisition

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The image acquisition system used in this work is described in details in reference [21].
Six different knitted fabric defects were used in this work beside free defects samples.
Thirty different images were captured for each defect and twenty five images were taken
for fabrics that are free from defects to be used as control samples. The defects which
were chosen for this work, as shown in Figure 1 and include broken needle, fly, hole,
barrie, thick yarn and thin yarn. All the images are processed using histogram
equalization to reassign the brightness values of the pixels to achieve a uniform
distribution and improve the visual appearance of the images. Colored images were
converted to the grey level to improve the computer processing time and speed.

Broken Needle Fly Hole

Barrie Thick Yarn Thin Yarn

Figure 1: Typical color images of fabric defects

Feature Extraction

The feature extraction aspect of image analysis seeks to identify inherent characteristics,
or features, of objects found within an image. These characteristics are used to describe
the object, or attributes of the object, prior to the subsequent task of classification.
Feature extraction operates on two-dimensional image arrays but produces a list of
descriptions, or feature vectors [20].

In this work, two approaches have been used to extract image features. The first approach
is based on a statistical procedure and the second is based on transferring the image
matrix to the frequency domain using a Fourier Transform.

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Statistical Approach

In this approach the all images were converted to black and white images and represented
by a matrix of binary values (0 or 1). Values in rows and columns were added to produce
a column or row vector, as shown in Figure 2. The standard deviation, range, maximum -
median and the mean values were calculated for each column and row vector. Since the
mean values of both vectors are the same and equal to the mean value of the whole
matrix, seven different features were produced in this analysis.

Figure 2: Feature Extraction Approach

Fourier Transform Approach

Fourier Transform is an important image processing tool which is used to decompose an

image into its sine and cosine components revealing its patterns of repeatable events and
highlighting irregular image features. The output of the transformation represents the
image in the Fourier or frequency domain, while the input image is the spatial domain
equivalent. In the Fourier domain image, each point represents a particular frequency
contained in the spatial domain image. In practice, images are typically digitized in
square arrays which limits our interest to the Fourier transform equation-pair given in
equations (1&2).

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The Fourier Transform is used to access the geometric characteristics of a spatial domain
image. Because the image in the Fourier domain is decomposed into its sinusoidal
components, it is easy to examine or process certain frequencies of the image, thus
influencing the geometric structure in the spatial domain.

N −1 N −1 (1)
1
F ( u, v ) =
N
∑ ∑ f ( x , y ) e − j 2π ( ux +vy )/ N
x =0 y =0
for u, v = 0, 1,2, . . . , N-1 , and

N −1 N −1 (2)
1
f ( x, y) =
N
∑ ∑ F (u, v) e j 2π (ux +vy )/ N
u =0 v =0

for x, y = 0, 1, 2, . . . , N-1.

Figures 3 and 4 show the spectrum of the images in the frequency domain. It can be seen
that spatial frequency changes with the spatial periodicity of fabric defects. Due to the
symmetry of the spectrum, only one quarter of the transform was chosen to represent the
image. The most obvious variations occurred at the positions Fet1, Fet2, Fet3, Fet4, Fet5
and Fet6 of the spectrum. So, these six peaks were taken as features to the images.

Fet1

Fet2
Fet6
Fet3
Fet4

Fet5

Figure 3: Spectrum for free defect image

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Fet1
Fet6

Fet4 Fet2

Fet5
Fet3

Figure 4: Quarter of the spectrum for free defect image

Using the Neural Network (NNt) as a Classifier

Neural networks have been developed as generalization of mathematical models of

human cognition. Since neural networks showed promise for solving difficult problems in
areas such as pattern recognition and classification, it has been used also in this part. The
neural network consists of a group of simple elements called neurons (see Figure 5)
which process the input information (x). These neurons are connected with each other
with links to carry the signals between them. There is a weight for each connection link
(W) which acts as a multiplication factor to the transmitted signal (Σθ). An activation
function (F) is applied to each neuron’s input to determine the output signal (O). Bias
terms can be presented to solve specific problem with obvious result-tendencies [22].

Bias term

xi1
Wj1
Input Oi
∑θ i
Fi Output
xin Wjn

Figure 5: Basic neuron model

Using neural networks as a classifier requires two main work steps. The first step, the
training phase, the neural network makes the proper adjustment for its weights to produce
the desired response. When the actual output response is the same as the desired one, the

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network has completed the training phase (i.e., it has acquired knowledge). The second
step is the testing phase. In this phase the neural network is asked to classify a new set of
images and its success is evaluated. In this work the neural networks were trained by the
LVQ algorithm to detect and classify the knitted fabric defects. The features vectors were
used as the input vectors to the NNt.

Results

Two neural networks were trained and tested for each features extraction approach. Table
1 shows the results of the features extracted using the statistical method. It is clear that
the NNt succeeds in classifying 100% correct four defects (broken needle, hole, thick and
thin yarn). The results were not as successful in detecting and classifying the free defect
samples and the fly defect. The barrie’ defect has the worst result even in the training
phase. The barrie’ defect has a linear nature and periodicity that resembles those of thin
or thick yarn defects including possible tension variation either in the fed yarn or in the
take-up, color variations, or heat-set variation in textured yarns.

Table 1: The classification results for the statistical approach

Training (%) Testing (%) Overall (%)
1- Free 93.33 80 86.7
2- Broken Needle 100 100 100
3- Barrie’ 60 60 60
4- Fly 90 80 85
5- Hole 100 100 100
6- Thick 100 100 100
7- Thin 100 100 100
Overall Performance % 91.85 88.57 90.21

Table 2 shows the results for the features extracted by the second approach. The NNt
succeeded in detecting all of the free defect samples in both the training and testing
phases and classifying all four defects (broken needle, fly, hole and thin yarn) correctly.
Again we have the worst results with the barrie’ defect. In this approach the features of
the barrie’ defect affected the classifying of the thick yarn defect.

Table 2: The classification results for the Fourier Transform approach

Training (%) Testing (%) Overall (%)
1- Free 100 100 100
2- Broken Needle 100 100 100
3- Barrie’ 65 60 63.333
4- Fly 100 100 100
5- Hole 100 100 100
6- Thick 80 80 80
7- Thin 100 100 100
Overall Performance % 92.14285714 91.4286 91.90471

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Conclusions

In this work two approaches have been used to extract image features for six different
knitted fabric defects beside a free defect fabric. Neural networks were used as a
classifier using the LVQ algorithm in training the networks. Results show success in
classifying most of the defects. The classification results for the barrie’ defect were not
conceived using either approaches for the nature of the defect shape which cause it to
interfere with other defects like thick/thin yarn defects. The results of using the Fourier
Transform features extraction approach was slightly more successful than the statistical
approach in detecting the free defect sample and classifying most of the other defects.

References

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