Machine Vision-Based Pilling Assessment: A Review

Abstract

Pilling is an undesired defect of textile fabrics, consisting of a surface characterized by a number of roughly spherical masses made of entangled fibers. Mainly caused by the abrasion of fabric surface occurring during washing and wearing of fabrics, this defect needs to be accurately controlled and measured by companies working in the textile industry. Pilling measurement is traditionally performed using manual procedures involving visual control of fabric surface by human experts. Since the early nineties, great efforts in developing automatic and non-intrusive methods for pilling measurement have been made all around the world with the final aim of overcoming traditional, visual-based and subjective procedures. Machine Vision proved to be among the best options to perform such defect assessment since it provided increasingly performing measurement equipment and tools, serving the purpose of automatic control. In particular, a relevant number of interesting works have been proposed so far, sharing the idea of helping (or even replacing) traditional measurement methods using image processing-based ones. The present work provides a rational and chronological review of the most relevant methods for pilling measurement proposed so far. This work serves the purposes of 1) understanding whether today's automatic machine vision-based pilling measurement techniques are ready for supplanting traditional pilling measurement and 2) providing textile technology researchers with a bird's eye view of the main methods studied to confront with this problem.

Changes in Fabric Surface Pilling under Laser Ablation

“…This made it impossible to observe the behavior of the fibers during the initial stage of use. The samples after the MT test were assessed by three independent experts using the commonly accepted five-point scale presented in Figure 4 [ 43 ].…”

Design and Manufacturing of an Innovative Triple-Layer Thermo-Insulated Fabric

“…Since fabrics take a long time to be pilled in normal use, resistance to pilling needs to be tested by simulated accelerated wear, followed by a visual assessment of the degree of pilling based on a visual comparison of the sample to a set of test images. T4Innovation prototypes were tested according to the ISO12947 standard, by using the Martindale tester [22] and samples are evaluated in a scale varying in the range [1 ÷ 5] where 1 indicates "severe pilling" and 5 indicates "no pilling". In addition, intermediate values (e.g., 2, 3) can be measured.…”

Wpływ oddziaływania wiązki laserowej na skłonność tkanin poliestrowych do pilingu

“…Przedstawił procedury związane z wykorzystaniem szybkiej transformaty Fouriera (FFT) i inne techniki korygowania defektów obrazu, takie jak niejednolite tło i niski kontrast [25]. Inne zespoły badaczy również oceniając ilość powstałych węzełków opierają swoje badania na metodzie obrazowania 2D opartej na analizie Fouriera lub transformacie falkowej [26,27], metodzie obrazowania 2D opartej na progowaniu [28], metodzie obrazowania 3D [13,14] lub metodzie sztucznej inteligencji [29,30]. Analiza obrazu jest jedną z głównych metod analizy powierzchni lub obrazów pozyskanych w drodze zastosowań tomografów [31][32][33][34].…”