Fabric Defect Detection Using Local Homogeneity
and Morphological Image Processing
A. Rebhi, S. Abid, F. Fnaiech
Scientific Research Laboratory in Signal, Image Processing and Energy Mastery (SIME)
University of Tunis 5 Av. Taha Hussein 1008, Tunis, Tunisia.
ali_rebhi@yahoo.fr
Abstract— In this paper, a new fabric defect detection
algorithm based on local homogeneity and mathematical
morphology is presented. In a first step, the local homogeneity of
each pixel is computed to construct a new homogeneity image
denoted as (H-image). Then a classical histogram is computed for
the H-image to choose an optimal thresholding value to produce a
corresponding binary image, which will be used to extract the
optimal size and the shape of the Structuring Element (SE) for
mathematical morphology. In a second step, the image is
subjected to a series of morphological operations with this SE to
detect the possible existing fabric defect. Simulation results
exhibit accurate defect detection with low false alarms.
Keywords—Fabric defect detection; local homogeneity (H-
image); morphological operations
I. INTRODUCTION
The high quality is the watchword of any type of industrial
or manufactured products. Any product without good quality
leads to loss and lack of customer satisfaction. This is the case
of textile industries for example. Textileamanufacturingais a
processaof converting various typesaofafibers into yarn, which
in turn woven into fabric. In textilezindustries, quality
inspectionzis one of theqmajor problems fordfabric
manufacturers. Currently in textile industries, manual
inspection is carried out. Theafabric obtained from the
productionqmachine are batched intoalarger rolls and subjected
to the inspection frame. The nature of the work is very dull and
repetitive. Due to manualxinspection of the manufactured
fabric, there is a possibility of human errors with high
inspection time. Fabric defects are responsible for nearly 85%
of the defects found in the garment industry [1]. Also, it has
been observed that price of textile fabric is reduced by 45% to
65% due to defects [2]. The development of an automated
inspection system requires robust and efficient fabric defect
detection techniques.
In textilexxindustry, imaging and image processing
techniques arewinvestigated for off-line and on-line visual
inspection of fabric for the detection of defects [3, 4].
Numerousnmethods havecbeen designed to solve the defect
detectionstask in the fabric images. Chi-ho Chan and Grantham
[5] provided a comprehensive overview of defectcdetection by
Fourier analysis. Wavelet transform is another method which
was applied in [6-8]. Gaborxfilters has been widely used in the
field of fabric defect detection. All the detection approaches
using Gabor filter can be classified into twowcategories. One is
to use a filter bank, such as [9, 10] and the other one is to use
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optimal filters, such as [11-13] Hong-Dar Lin used the concept
of the statisticalzapproach [14, 15] for visual inspection of
ripple defects. The approachaused waveletadecomposition to
extract feature vectors to describe the surface properties. Then,
multivariate statistics of Hotelling T2 control chart were
applied to integrate the multiplextexture features andajudge the
existence of ripple defects in the image.
In textured images, discontinuities representagenerally an
important feature such as boundaries. It is known that the local
homogeneity analysis is the method to detect these
discontinuities [16, 17].
Recently, thewtechniques of morphologicalwwimage
processing are widely used for imagexanalysis and have been a
valuable tool in many computerdvision applications, especially
in the areas of automated inspection [18]. The morphological
operations for defectxdetection in fabric arewinherently
sensitive to the size and shape of the defect. Therefore, while
applyingxmorphological imagewprocessing technique on the
fabric image for the detection of defects, the software-based
morphological operations may give poor result. Previous
research hasxdemonstrated that the use of morphologicalafilters
can significantly lower the false alarm rate [19- 21].
In this paper, we develop a new algorithm for fabric defect
detection in textile industry. The proposed algorithm uses
morphological operations and the local homogeneity analysis
(H-image).
This paper is organized as follows: The local homogeneity
computation is presented in section II. The morphological
operations is then described in section III. Section IV describes
the algorithm for fabric defect detection. Section V gives
simulation results on different fabric images and several
defects. Finally in section VI the main conclusions and
perspectives are given.
II. LOCAL HOMOGENEITY COMPUTATION
It is known that discontinuities in textured images
represent generally an important feature such as boundaries.
The main problem is how to detect these discontinuities? A
method to resolve this problem is the homogeneity (H). The
calculation of H was proposed first by Jing et al. in [22]. Let P
be a squared window i.e. a mask of (2N+1) width centered on
the pixel I c ( x c , y c ) . In the window P one can define
different vectors coming from the central pixel and going to
pixel Pi by: Pi ,c = ( x j − xc , y j − yc ) , note that the index i is
an integer number defined as:
c−N ≤ j ≤c+N
(1)
1 ≤ i < (2 N + 1) 2
Here ( xi , yi ) are the coordinate of the pixel Pi, ( xc , yc ) are
the coordinates of the central pixel (Pc) and N is an integer
number, which define the mask size.
Note that this definition allows us to compute the homogeneity
of a pixel for different mask sizes (3 × 3), (5 × 5) etc.
Figure 1 shows an example of the different pixels used to
compute homogeneity in a window of size (5x5) pixels.
Where H min and H max are the minimum and the maximum
value of homogeneity respectively.
The resulting H-image is constructed by the different values of
Ĥ computed for each pixel value I c ( x c , y c ) .
The resulting H-image is a grayscale one whose pixel values
are the Ĥ values of the pixel homogeneities. It is easily noted
that the Ĥ values are very small for homogenous regions, and
high within boundaries and non-homogenous regions.
Consequently, the H-image can be viewed as a transformation
of the original one where the homogenous regions are
transformed on the dark areas and the non-homogenous region
on gray scale regions. It follows that the H-image can be used
as a discontinuity measurement in the image.

III. MORPHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

The language of Mathematical Morphology (MM) is set
theory. Sets in MM represent objects in an image. MM is the
science of appearance, shape and organization. MM deals with
non-linear processes which can be applied to an image to
remove details smaller than a certain reference shape called
the structuring element [23]. MM is also the foundation of
morphological image processing, which consists of a set of
operators that transform images according to the above
characterizations. There are four fundamental operations in
morphology, which are dilation, erosion, opening and closing.
Fig. 1 Different vectors fi used to compute the local homogeneity for 5x5
masks
MM was originally developed for binary images, and was later
extended to grayscale functions and images. The foundational
Based on the definition of the vector linking the central pixel operations of binary morphology are defined as follows:
with any arbitrary pixel Pi ,c = ( xi − xc , yi − yc ) a new vector Dilation is similar to convolution, in which the structuring
element is reflected and shifted from left to right and then
fi is constructed as follows: from top to bottom. If X is the reference image and B is the
structuring element, the dilation of X by B is represented as:
Pi ,c
fi = ( I ( xi , yi ) − I ( xc , yc ) ) (2)
{ ( ) ∩ X ≠ 0}

Pi ,c X ⊕B= z\ B
z
(6)

For a mask of width (2 N + 1) , we have (2 N + 1) 2 − 1 vectors

The erosion of X by B is described as follow:
fi :1 ≤ i < (2 N + 1)2

{ () }
Let f be the sum of all vectors defined in the window P, so: 
X ΘB = z \ B ⊆X (7)
z
(2 N +1)2 −1
f = i =1
fi (3)
The opening of set X by structuring element B is represented
The H value measurement (the homogeneity value) is defined as:
as the norm of f , so that:
H= f (4) X  B = ( X ΘB ) ⊕ B (8)

To limit the huge variation of the local homogeneity the

The closing of set X by structuring element B is represented
normalized homogeneity is used:
as:
H − H min
Hˆ = (5) X • B = ( X ⊕ B ) ΘB (9)
H max − H min

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 Note that dilation and erosion on binary images can be
viewed as a form of convolution over a Boolean algebra of
operations (NOT, AND, OR, XOR), which are defined
between pixels of corresponding locations in two images
of equal dimensions [24]. Furthermore opening and closing
are two higher order operations built on dilation and
erosion. Due to the connection with Boolean operations,
the erosion and dilation can turn black pixels white and
white pixels black when certain conditions are met.
IV. A PROPOSED ALGORITHM FOR FABRIC DEFECT
DETETCTION
This method consists in scanning the original image with a
squared window and computing the local homogeneity for
each pixel and constructing the (H-image). In our work, we
have used a window of size (11× 11) pixels. After, every H-
image is histogram equalized and then thresholded to produce
binary image. Then a series of morphological operations such
as opening and closing using the Structuring Element (SE) is
applied to the binary image. Figure 2 shows the Flowchart of
the proposed method.
In the following we give a brief description of each step
For an image I of the size (NxM) pixels
Step 1:Scan the input image I with a squared window and
compute the local homogeneity for each pixel and construct
the (H-image).
Step 2: Thresholding using the histogram: in this step the
classical histogram is computed for the H-image to choose the
optimal thresholding value for binarization. In the H-image if
the mask size is chosen correctly then the histogram will be
almost uniform for defect less image and bimodal for textures
containing defects.
Step 3: Applied the opening operation: this step involves
applying an opening operation by a square structuring element
in order to eliminate as much as possible the texture
background in the fabric image.
Fig.2 Flowchart of the proposed methods
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Step 4: Applied the closing operation: The smoothed fabric
image is then closed again by using a 3 × 3 square structuring
element.
Step 5: Defect extraction: after applying the opening and
closing operation, the last step of the scheme is the producing
the final detection result.
V. SIMULATION RESULTS
In the purpose of evaluating the performances of the
proposed method, we present simulation results on different
textured images; each one may contain several defects. All
simulations were wrote in Matlab language on a personal
computer (Intel® core™ 2Duo CPU T5870 @2Gh). The
whole textured images are 256x256 pixels wide with 8-bit
gray levels.
Figure 3 and 4 show results of the proposed method for
fabric defects detection. In Figure 3 we used images with only
one defect and in Figure 4 we shown examples of images with
various defects. In each figure the first line shows fabric
images that contains defects. The second line shows the
various defects extracted using the H-image and the
morphological operations. The proposed algorithm was able to
correctly detect the defect.
Figure 3 shows the results of the proposed method for
fabric defects detection. The first line shows fabric images that
contains defects. The second line shows the various defects
extracted using the H-image and the morphological
operations. The proposed algorithm was able to correctly
detect the defect.
The performance of the scheme is evaluated by visually
assessing the quality of the binary output images. True
detections (TD) are recorded when (1) the white areas of the
binary output image only overlap the areas of the
corresponding defects in the fabric image, and (2) no white
area appears in the binary output image if the fabric image
contains no defect. False alarms (FA) are recorded when the
white areas appearing in the binary output image do not
only overlap the areas of the corresponding defects in the
fabric image, but also appear in some other areas
significantly distant from the defect areas, or when white
areas appear in the binary output image when the fabric
image contains no defect. Overall detection (OD) is the sum
of TD and FA. Missed detection (MD) means that no white
area appears in the binary output image even if the fabric
image contains a defect. Table 1 summarizes the test results
over 90 test images.
It is interesting to note that despite the varying size and
orientation of the defects, the algorithm managed to identify
accurately most of the defects.
Note that these results reveal that the defects in all
defective surfaces are correctly detected.
TABLE I. THE OVERALL TEST RESULTS OF THE PROPOSED
DETECTION SCHEME
The detection scheme Performance
Overall Detection (OD) 86 (95.6%)
False alarm (FA) 2 (2.2%)
Missed Detection (MD) 2 (2.2% )
Based on these results, it can be concluded that the
morphological operations provide a good performance for
the given fabric defect detection problem.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper, a new morphological approach for detecting
fabric defects is presented. It is based on the local
homogeneity of each pixel (H-image). In this proposed
approach we use opening and closing operations, using a
square structuring element, to extract fabric defect.
The performance of the scheme has been extensively
evaluated by using a variety of fabric samples, which differ
in defect type, size and shape, texture background, and
image resolution. The results obtained have shown that the
scheme is effective and robust.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank the Industrial Automation
Research Laboratory Dept. of Electrical and Electronic
Engineering, The University of Hong Kong for providing
the fabric image database.
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 Fig.3 First line: images with defects and second line: defects localization

Fig.4 First line: images with defects and second line: defects localization

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