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Image Analysis Measurements of White Specks on U.S. Extreme Varieties of Cotton

Cotton Structure and Quality, Southern Regional Research Center, ARS, USDA, 1100 Robert E. Lee Blvd, New Orleans, LA 70124, USA, belberg{at}srrc.ars.usda.gov

Bugao Xu

Department of Human Ecology, The University of Texas at Austin, 219 Gearing Hall, Austin, TX 78712, USA

White specks are a specific type of fiber defect that result in high financial losses to the cotton industry. Fiber entanglements are called neps. Neps that involve immature fibers do not dye properly and appear as white specks on the dyed fabric. Studies to predict white specks from bale fiber measurements are underway. Initially a reliable method for measuring white specks is needed. Several systems have been evaluated and are reported here. The systems accuracy was compared using fiber from the US Extreme Variety Study, which was grown specifically to have different levels of white specks. This paper sets out the experimental work and analysis undertaken to develop and validate a system for reliably quantifying the amount of white specks in a woven fabric. Four image analysis systems are compared. This includes two industrial imaging systems (Cambridge and Optimas)² and two systems specifically developed for white speck analysis (Cotton Incorporated’s prototype and AutoRate). The Cambridge system was too sensitive for this application, and the Cotton Incorporated system was found to have drift in the data over time so that the problem could not be identified. The Optimas system is time consuming and not accurate enough for this application. The AutoRate system gives the most accurate measurements of white specks in the minimal amount of time, with minimal operator error, of all of the systems studied and is currently being used in developing prediction of white specks from bale fiber properties.

Key Words: cotton maturity • nep • white speck • image analysis

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