Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

A Novel Approach to Fabric Defect Detection Using Digital

Image Processing
S.Priya T. Ashok kumar
Asst. Professor Dr. Varghese Paul
Asst. Professor
Dept. of Computer Sc. & Engg: Dean, Dept. of CS/IT Research,
Dept. of Electronics & Com. Engg: TocH Institute of Science&
Govt. Model Engineering College,
College of Engineering, Cherthala Technology, Arakkunnam,
Ernakulam , Kerala, India
Alappuzha, Kerala, India Ernakulam Dist, Kerala, India
[email protected],
[email protected] [email protected]
[email protected]

Abstract-This several years. Wastage reduction through accurate and early stage detection of
defects in fabrics is also an important aspect of quality improvement.
paper presents a novel approach to the fast
detection and extraction of fabric defects from the images of textile fabric. Automated visual
inspection systems are much needed in the textile industry, especially when the quality control The high cost ,along with other disadvantages of human visual inspection has led
of products in textile industry is a significant problem. In the manual fault detection systems to the development of on-line machine vision systems that are capable of
with trained inspectors, very less percentage of the defects are being detected while a real performing inspection tasks automatically. The problem of textile web inspection
time automatic system can increase this to a maximum number .Thus, automated visual
is particularly complex, since there is a large variety of fabrics of different
inspection systems play a great role in assessing the quality of textile fabrics. For the detection
structures, compositions, colors, and other properties. Human inspection
of fabric defects, we first decompose the image into its bit planes. The lower order bit planes
systems are still preferred for a number of tasks because an alternate solution,
are found to carry important information of the location and shape of defects. Then we find the
reliable and versatile enough, is not available yet. Therefore, the search in the
exact location by means of mathematical morphology.
field is still wide open.

Textile quality control involves, among other tasks, the detection of defects that
The algorithm has been tested on a subset of TILDA I image database with various visual
cause a distortion of the basic structure of the material, which commonly shows a
qualities. Robustness with respect to the changes of the parameters of the algorithm has been
high degree of periodicity. Several techniques of image analysis have been
evaluated.
proposed for this purpose. Inspection of 100% of fabric is necessary first to
determine the quality and second to detect any disturbance in the weaving
Keywords -Fabric defects, bitplane decomposition, mathematical process to prevent defects from reoccurring. Performance and assessment is
morphology ,dilation, erosion, opening, closing never constant and effectiveness decreases quickly with fatigue. Owing to the
very slow speed of human visual inspection compared to production rate,
I. INTRODUCTION
automatic inspection is more important than ever. Many researchers have
One of the industry fields where automated visual inspection systems are highly worked on the automation of inspection systems.
needed is the textile industry. Other than classifying a certain appearance of the
fabric, registration of the exact location of the defects and determining their type
are also important in several applications. The advantage for the manufacturer
here is to get a warning when a certain amount of defect or imperfection occurs
during the production of the fabric so that precautionary measures can be taken
II. BACKGROUND
before the product hits the market. It has been observed [1] that price of textile
fabric is reduced by 45% to 65% due to defects. Manual defect detection in a Fabric defect detection using digital image processing has received considerable

fabric quality control system with a width of 1.60-2.0 m and which moves with an attention during the past two decades and numerous approaches have been

average speed of 10 m per minute is a difficult task to be performed by proposed in the literature. Wang et a1. [2] reported that 90% of the defects in a

inspectors. The work of an observer is very tedious and time consuming. They plain fabric could be detected simply by thresholding. Table 1 summarizes a

have to detect small details that can be located in a wide area that is moving comparison between human visual inspection and automated inspection [4].

through their visual field. The identification rate is only about 70% [3]. Moreover, Zhang et al. [7] have introduced two approaches to detect defects: gray-level
the effectiveness of visual inspection decreases quickly with fatigue. Digital image statistical and morphological methods. Lanes [8] has defmed a number of
processing techniques have been increasingly applied to textured sample convolution masks to detect the defect. These methods, which
analysis over the past

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 Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

depend on intensity change on the fabric image, can only capture In general, the higher order bit planes contain a majority of visually
significant defects such as knot, web, and slub. significant data while the lower order ones contribute to more subtle
details in an image . On examining the eight bit planes of the image ,
TABLE I the lower order bit planes are found to carry significant information
regarding the location and shape of the fabric defect in the image.
Visual inspection versus automated
Inspection Type inspection
Visual Automated
g·bilpixel 6
Fabric Types 100% 70%
Defect Detection 5
70% 80%+
4
Reproducibility 50% 90%+ 3
2
Objective Defect 50% 100% Bit Plane 7 -- 4----------./
Judgment (MSB) o
Statistics Ability 0% 95%+
Inspection Speed 30 mlmin 120 mlmin
Response Type 50% 80%
Information Content 50% 90%+ Bit Plane 0
Information 20% 90%+ (LSB) -�-'-------.../
Exchange

Fig. 1.. Bitplane decomposition

In view of the high degree of periodicity for textile fabrics, Fourier
transform based approaches were developed for defect detection by
some researchers. Wood [9] has used Fourier and associate transform
to characterize carpet patterns, while in [10], the approach used is
Histogram equalization followed by FFT and central spatial frequency
spectrum analysis.

Unfortunately, most of the algorithms used today for fabric defect

localization or detection are computationally intensive and are less
accurate, particularly in the presence of a number of patterns and print.
The proposed algorithm is simple and more efficient for
implementation. There is no mathematical complexity as in other
methods and hence there is a significant improvement in
computational time also. This algorithm has been evaluated on a
subset of the TILDA I image database with various visual qualities .

III. BITPLANE DECOMPOSITION

Fig. 2. Original Image

Separating a digital image into its bit planes is useful for analyzing the
relative importance played by each bit of the image. Instead of
highlighting gray level images, highlighting the contribution made to
total image appearance by specific bits is examined here[I4]. In an 8 bit
gray level image, each pixel in an image is represented by 8 bits. The ::�:'!,':::::::::=:���:::�!:!&::::�::!t:�
image is composed of 8, I-bit planes ranging from bit plane 0 (LSB)to ::�::::::::::::::=I::::;''''I1:II.'1:;�!'�'::
,·_ .. ·· ..... · ,· .... ······ ........ m..
bit plane 7 (MSB). In terms of 8-bits, plane 0 contains all lowest order , ... ... ........ ' ... . , .......... ,....... I.

1'I .... :::=a:a::=:.U=1rm:&:

"

bits in the bytes comprising the pixels in the image and plane 7 ••• .. .... , ' ,. i il
contains all higher order bits. Thus bitplane decomposition of an 8 bit �"' =::''D.'If t' �r.... I:n.'I :t !1

...... ....... .....=, ..... ,1 .• ,., •• , ••

image yields eight binary images. The bit-plane representation of an 8 :::::�!:�� :!!:':l:�==::lr.:�� n�:�
bit image is shown in Fig. I • .• ....,&.....
...
, •. ...
.,.....; .........
J ,•• , .... 1111. ... ••
'.,.'.,.,.·.1.·.. • J. a,e .
--� .'
...................................... ,••••• 1...... ."
... .,.,.; .....,...,.,.,.,...,.,.,.,.'., ...,.,.,.,."
."'.",.,11".,., •.• •••• ··,···,11.'.'.'.'.'. .""
•.••.•.•, ..... '.1.,.,.'•.• ' .' •.• , •.• , ••.•.• ' ,. •.•..
• ,111.' ....... .,.;. ••• ,. ,.' •••••• ,., •••.• ,.,•.•.•••
.... . , ...., . ,.....,.........'.,... ..... . ...
I .• ' '. , ••• , ..... ",., •.• ,., ••• 11'.'.'1'.'. I.'. "'."
., ..... '.,., •.• '.,.J ••• '.,., •.•.•.• 1. I.e_. l.'." _I'
For the images, bit-plane 0 and bit-plane I are carrying vital data ,..........'.'.11 ............ ' ..... ,.·."" ,.,." , ...
1,...;1 . , .,•.•.•,.,.:.,•.1,11".,11' •••••••••••
corresponding to the position and shape of the defects. Bit-planes 0 •••••.•
� •.•• e ....... .. , •• a •••• I
••••••,.,........,..... , ......... I. ,.la, ... '81'
••• ,.,.:atl'.ilf.J ••.•. 1

and I of the chosen image are shown in Fig. 3 and Fig.4 respectively.
As bit-plane images are binary images, they are highly suited for
morphological image processing. Fig. 3. Bitplane 0

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 Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

contours, breaks narrow strips and eliminate thin portions of the image. It is
mathematically represented as

X 0 B = (X 8 B) ffi B
Closing operation does the opposite of opening. It is dilation followed by erosion.
Closing fills small gaps and holes in a single pixel object. The closing process is
represented by

X • B = (X ffi B) 8 B
Closing operation protects coarse structures, closes small gaps and rounds off
concave comers.

Morphological operations are widely used in the detection of boundaries in a

binary image. For an image X , the following can be applied to obtain a boundary
image

Fig. 4. Bitplane 1
Y X- (X8B) Y (X
= =

ffi B) - X
IV. MATHEMATICAL MORPHOLOGY

Mathematical morphology deals with non-linear processes which can be applied or Y (X ffi B) - (X 8 B)
=

to an image to remove details smaller than a certain reference shape called the
where, the operator 'ffi' denotes dilation , '8' denotes erosion and '- ' indicates the
structuring element. The most widely used morphological operations used in set theoretical subtraction.
image processing are dilation, erosion, opening and closing. Binary images are
best suited for performing morphological operations. The images obtained after
Most binary morphological operations have natural extensions to gray scale
bit plane decomposition are binary images, which are thus suitable for performing
processing. Some, like morphological reconstruction, have applications that are
morphological operations[15]. Note that bit planes 0 and 1 contain the most
unique to gray scale images , such as peak filtering.
significant information regarding the location and shape of the fabric defect .

V. THE METHODOLOGY

Dilation is an operation in which the binary image is expanded from its original We first convert the RGB image obtained from the camera to an equivalent
shape. The amount of expansion is controlled by the structuring element. The grayscale image using the Matlab function 'rgb2gray'. Now bit plane slicing is
dilation process is similar to convolution, in which the structuring element is performed on the gray scale image to decompose it into its bit planes. The lower order
reflected and shifted from left to right and then from top to bottom. In this bit planes are preserved for further processing and the higher order ones are discarded.
process, any overlapping pixels under the centre position of the structuring Figure 3 and Figure 4 shows bit plane 0 and bit plane 1 respectively for a representative
element are assigned with 1 or black values. If X is the reference image and B is image. Bit plane 0 is now opened by a disc shaped structuring element to obtain a clear
the structuring element, the dilation ofXby B is represented as white region corresponding to the defect such as shown in Figure 5.

x ffi B = {ZI[(B)znX] !; X}
Where B is the image B rotated about the origin. When an image X is dilated by
a structuring element B, the outcome element Z would be that there will be at
least one element in B that intersects with an element in X

Erosion is a thinning operator that shrinks an image. The amount by which

shrinking takes place is determined by the structuring element. Here, if there is a
complete overlapping with the structuring element, the pixel is set white or O. The
erosion of Xby B is given as

X8B = {ZI [(B)z] !; X}

In erosion, the outcome element Z is considered only when the structuring
element is a subset or equal to the binary image X

Opening operation is done by first performing erosion,

followed by dilation. Opening smoothens the inside of object Fig. 5. Opened Bitplane 0

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 Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

commonly used methods and the results show that the method proposed here
can not only detect defects but also provide more acceptable location of the
defect .

VI. RESULTSAND DISCUSSION

Modern industrial manufacturing of materials such as fabric, paper, wood, leather,

etc. requires a large number of inspection tasks concerning the visual
appearance of the material surface (texture, color, fault detection, etc.). The
problem of textile web inspection is particularly complex, since there is a large
variety of fabrics of different structures, compositions, colors, and other
properties. Textile quality control involves, among other tasks, the detection of
defects that cause a distortion of the basic structure of the material, which
commonly shows a high degree of periodicity. Several techniques of image
analysis have been proposed for this purpose. If the fabric sample exhibits an
overall distortion, Fourier-domain-based techniques allow one to obtain
Fig. 6. Dilated Outline successful results to detect shrinking, abrasion and skewness. If the fabric
sample has local defects or faults such as holes, stains, broken threads, etc.,

A suitably processed bit plane I can be used to compensate for errors, if any, then it is a good practice to apply methods based on wavelet transforms, used as
multiresolution spectral filters, that localize and analyze features in both the
in the previous operation.
spatial and the frequency domain. Some other tasks concerning pattern
The matlab function 'bwperim' is used to obtain the outline of the defect. This recognition, weave-repeat identification and classification can also be performed
outline is subsequently dilated by a carefully selected structuring element to using techniques based on Fourier analysis. In general, only uniformly colored
obtain an image as shown in Figure 6. materials are usually considered because, the existence of hierarchical structures
given by bands, squares, circles, or drawings of varied colors along with the basic
woven structure makes the inspection more difficult.
Now the fabric defect can be localized by superimposing the outline on the

original grayscale image as shown in Figure 7.

We, human beings, have a unique capability to easily fmd imperfections in spatial
structures. This visual mechanism works even when we do not know what the
ideal pattern is and what the possible types of defects are. Just looking at a
relatively regular structure containing an imperfection, we can usually tell what is
wrong there. But human inspector based defect detection is subject to errors for
many reasons. There are large influences of human errors and subjectivity on the
results of inspection. Presence of other factors such as noise, non-uniform
illumination and variety of defect types in textiles make the defect detection a
challenging problem. Due to these reasons, an expert system for the automatic
detection of such anomalies has inspired much research in this direction.

Fig. 7. Defect Marked Image The proposed algorithm is simple and more efficient for automation. There
is no mathematical complexity as in other methods and hence there is a
significant improvement in computational time also. Moreover, this method does
not just detect the defect but the shape and size of the defect also. It extracts
The algorithm has been implemented by using Matlab version 7.9 (Release 2009
most defect pixels accurately. This algorithm has been evaluated on a subset of
b) and is found to be reasonably fast and accurate than the existing computationally
the TILDA I image database with various visual qualities. The algorithm is found
intensive methods. The results are promising even when it is applied to localize defects
to be superior to the existing ones in terms of computational speed and accuracy.
on images with varying lighting or exposure levels .
Several images with different types of defects were

The algorithm has been tested and compared with the

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 Proceedings of 2011 International Conference on Signal Processing, Communication, Computing and Networking Technologies (ICSCCN 2011)

also tested using the algorithm. The false alarm rate is found to be less than 5% carpets" , in Proc. SPIE, vol. 2345, 1995, pp. 180-191.

even in low contrast images with multiple defects. Our algorithm has an average [3] T. E Mursalin, F. Z Eishita and AR Islam, "Fabric defect inspection using Neural
network and Microcontroller," Journal of Theoretical and Applied Information
accuracy of90.8%. The main attraction of the proposed method is its simplicity ,
Technology, 2008,pp 560-570.
accuracy and computational time. This algorithm demonstrates its strong ability to [4] R. Meier, "Uster Fabriscan, The Intelligent Fabric Inspection," [Online document], cited
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well even when the input image is a low-contrast one. The experimental results http://www.kotonline.com/english�ages/ana ba sl iklar/uster.asp.
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[6] A Kumar and G.K.H. Pang, "Defect detection in textured materials using Gabor filters",
VII. CONCLUSION
IEEE Trans. Ind. Appl., vol. 38, no.2, pp. 425-440,
A novel fabric defect detection and localization algorithm is proposed in this
2002.
paper based on bitplane decomposition and mathematical morphology. The
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[8] J. S. Lane and S. C. Moure, "Textile fabric inspection system," U.S. Patent 5 774
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ACKNOWLEDGMENT [9] E. J.Wood, "Applying Fourier and associated transforms to pattern charecterization in
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The authors are highly indebted to Ms. Cynthia Findlay of TILDA TECHNO-
[10] C. Chan and G. K. H. Pang, "Fabric defect detection by Fourier analysis", IEEE Trans.
VISION Project. TILDA is a Textile Texture Database which was developed within
on Ind. Appl, vol 36, no.5,ppI267-1276 Oct 2000
the framework of the working group Texture Analysis of the DFG's (Deutsche
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Inspection of Technical Objects". The images were kindly provided by the TILDA
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program partners.
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