IMAGE-ANALYSIS OF INSULATION MINERAL FIBERS

The measurement of the diameters and lengths of Man-Made Vitreous Fibr es (MMVFs) used in insulation materials is important to the glass and mineral wool industry. Such measurements are needed for quality contro l purposes. To obtain reliable quality estimators, the measurement of several hundreds of fibres is necessary, traditionally carried out by human operators. Manual measurements are reliable if performed by skil led operators, but are always slow and repetitive. In this paper, two methods for performing these measurements are presented. These methods are based on the automated image analysis of Scanning Electron Micros copy (SEM) images. For each of the two proposed methods, we present in succession the sample preparation and the image analysis algorithms u sed for the segmentation of the fibres and for their measurement.