DETERMINING GRAVIMETRIC BARK CONTENT IN COTTON WITH MACHINE VISION

A method is needed to accurately and rapidly determine the gravimetric bark content of a cotton sample. Gravimetric bark content represents the percent bark mass throughout the volume of a cotton sample. The cu rrent method for measuring gravimetric bark content is a labor intensi ve, lengthy process. Machine vision, on the other hand, is a fast, ine xpensive method to measure this bulk cotton property. Ten acquired ima ges of surfaces throughout each sample are used. Classical digital ima ge processing techniques isolate foreign matter regions in monochrome video images. Geometric properties (area and perimeter) are used to id entify which foreign matter is bark and to predict the gravimetric bar k content in forty-eight cotton samples with varying bark and total fo reign matter content. We suggest a model with six features and interce pt, which has an estimated error of 0.46% bark mass.