Imaging method for determining stray fibers

• US 10,311,575 B2
• Filed: 03/23/2017
• Issued: 06/04/2019
• Est. Priority Date: 03/23/2016
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: The Procter & Gamble Company
• Original Assignee: The Procter & Gamble Company
• Inventors: Stofel, Samuel Wolfe, Bartz, Lisa Jo, Buckner, Erica Vencil, Chen, Tian, Marsh, Jennifer Mary, Punyani, Supriya, Wolsing, Dana Hance, Song, Brian Xiaoqing, Yang, Tiffany Tien-Yun
• Primary Examiner(s): Vu, Kim Y
• Assistant Examiner(s): Bloom, Nathan J
• Application Number:
  US15/467,317
• Publication Number:
  US 20170278249A1
• Time in Patent Office: 803 Days
• Field of Search: None
• CPC Class Codes: A61B 5/448 Hair evaluation, e.g. for hair disorder diagnosis
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2207/10024 Color image
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/12 Edge-based segmentation
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/13 Edge detection
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 7/90 Determination of colour characteristics
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/16 Human faces, e.g. facial parts, sketches or expressions

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of detecting stray fibers emanating from a substrate comprising: a) Taking an image or a series of consecutive images of stray fibers in front of a contrasted background, that is created using one or more light sources, using a digital device; b) Segmenting of stray fibers and background from objects not directly contrasted against the background resulting in a binary image mask; c) Applying an edge detection technique to the image or modification of original image to enhance contrast of stray fibers against the background; and Applying the binary image mask from step b) to an image created in step c) to create an image in which only the stray fibers and/or outline of any other object contrasted against the background are present.

Claims

1. A method of detecting stray fibers emanating from a substrate comprising:

a) Taking an image or a series of consecutive images of stray fibers in front of a contrasted background, that is created using one or more light sources, using a digital device;

b) Segmenting of stray fibers and background from objects not directly contrasted against the background resulting in a binary image mask;

c) Applying an edge detection technique to the image from 1a) or modification of the image of 1a) to enhance contrast of stray fibers against the background;

d) Applying the binary image mask from step b) to an image created in step c) to create an image in which the stray fibers and/or outline of any other object contrasted against the background are present.

2. Method of claim 1 wherein step b) the segmentation technique is a single threshold constant or combination of threshold constants that define intensity ranges.

3. Method of claim 1 wherein step c) the edge detection technique is a Laplacian, Canny, Sobel, Robertson, Prewitt, high pass filtering or any other type of edge detection filter.

4. Method of claim 1 wherein step d) is followed by manipulating the stray fiber image by adjusting one or more of the following parameters;

gamma, contrast, brightness to enhance the appearance the stray fibers against the background pixels.

5. Method of claim 1 wherein step d) is followed by segmenting of the image to enhance the appearance the stray fibers against the background pixels.

6. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber image or a further manipulated version of the stray fiber image is used as a basis for quantifying the amount of stray fibers in the image.

7. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber image or a further manipulated version of the stray fiber image is used as a basis for performing additional visualizations of the original image.

8. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fibers are from the group consisting of hair, fabrics, cellulosic substrate, non-cellulosic and mixtures thereof.

9. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair is attached to a person.

10. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair is a hair tress.

11. Method of claim 10 wherein the hair tress is a braided tress.

12. Method of claim 1 step a) wherein the device is a color or monochrome digital camera that can be used to capture video or still images.

13. Method of claim 1 step a) wherein a color of the background is chosen to be different than the color of any other objects not directly contrasted against the background.

14. Method of claim 1 wherein the stray fiber has a diameter of 0.25 inches or less.

15. Method of claim 1 wherein the one or more light sources can be in a position selected from the group consisting of front, side, top, bottom, back or mixtures thereof.

16. Method of claim 8 wherein the hair or hair tress is twisted/rotated.

17. Method of claim 1, wherein object not directly contrasted against the background is masked out by a mask that is drawn manually or automatically added should the position and approximate size of the object be known.