Evaluation of fibre orientation in fibrous materials

The new computerized imaging, circular polarized light microscopy technique was developed to measure the orientation of fibres in images of fibrous ma terials. The results of the application of circular polarized light microsc opy were compared with the images obtained using transmitted light. Both me thods required the initial segmentation of fibres to complete the image ana lysis. Three methods of automatic segmentation were implemented. Segments o f fibre midlines were identified recursively from the Hilditch technique. T he fibre midlines produced Inj this technique were tranversed by a midline traversal algorithm and the orientation distribution was obtained by least squares line fitting. The accuracy of the developed techniques was evaluate d against images of thin webs. Kupier's statistic was used to evaluate the consistency of the fibre orientation calculations.