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Fabric Surface Roughness Evaluation Using Wavelet-Fractal Method Part

II: Fabric Pilling Evaluation

Article in Textile Research Journal · November 2005

DOI: 10.1177/0040517505059209

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November 2005 761

Fabric Surface Roughness Evaluation Using Wavelet-Fractal Method

Part II: Fabric Pilling Evaluation
Soo Chang Kim1 and Tae Jin Kang
Intelligent Textile System Research Center, School of Materials Science and Engineering,
Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 151-744

ABSTRACT
An objective and reliable evaluation method of fabric pilling using a three-dimensional
scanning system with higher accuracy is presented. The overall fabric surface roughness
together with the pilling characteristics were evaluated to comprehensively understand the
fabric pilling phenomena and exactly grade the degree of pilling. The fractal dimension
calculated by the wavelet-fractal method and the surface average mean curvature were used
as descriptors of fabric surface roughness. Localization and characterization of pills was
achieved by wavelet reconstruction. The number, area, and population density of pills were
extracted as the parameters of pilling characteristics. In order to select features and then
reduce dimensions, a Karhunen–Loève (K–L) transform was employed. Bayes, minimum
distance, k-nearest neighbors, and neural network classifiers were used to classify the fabric
pilling into objective grades. The experimental results demonstrated that the fabric pilling
evaluation system developed in this study represented both the fabric surface properties and
the pilling properties and also showed high accuracy in grading the degree of pilling.

Fabric pilling refers to one of the surface appearance
properties in which bundles or balls of tangled fibers
remain suspended on the fabric surface. Pilling degrades
the fabric appearance and touch, and reduces the value of
fabric products. Resistance to fabric degradation caused
by pilling is an important factor that needs to be evaluated.
To examine pilling, the fabrics are treated to form typical
pills by tumbling, brushing, or rubbing specimens with
abrasive materials in a machine and then comparing the
processed fabrics with visual standards to determine the
degree of pilling on a scale ranging from 1 (very severe
pilling) to 5 (no pilling) (American Standard for Testing
and Materials (ASTM) D3512-82) [3]. However, these
subjective methods based on visual estimation bring about
the inconsistent and inaccurate rating results. During the
last two decades considerable efforts have been made to
develop objective evaluation methods for grading of fab-
ric pilling, including image analysis techniques [1, 2, 6, 7,
10, 13, 14] and laser scanning [11].
With the advancement of three-dimensional (3-D) sur-
face measurement techniques, the precise surface data can
be acquired using a 3-D scanning system so that the char-
acteristics of fabric pilling can be fully evaluated from
1 To whom correspondence should be addressed: tel.: +82 2 880 7197,
fax: +82 2 885 1748; e-mail: loveincarnate@hotmail.com
richer and finer surface data. In our earlier study [8],
we described a method for the objective evaluation of
fabric wrinkle, smoothness appearance, and seam pucker
that was based on the fractal dimension calculated by the
wavelet-fractal method. The proposed method was vali-
dated using the fractal surfaces produced from the mathe-
matical functions. We also found that the surface average
mean curvature in several standard roughness parameters
could be a good descriptor to describe the surface rough-
ness as a supplementary reference. Our initial results for
the objective evaluation of fabric wrinkle, smoothness, and
seam pucker in the previous study also offer the possibility
to discriminate between grades of pilling.
In contrast to a general fabric surface evaluation, pilling
evaluation is different in that the pilling characteristics
such as the number, size and density of pills should be
included to accurately grade the degree of pilling. In other
words, the extent of overall fabric surface roughness has
to be measured together with the pilling characteristics.
The fractal dimension calculated by the wavelet-fractal
method and the surface average mean curvature suggested
in our earlier study [8] are used to evaluate a general sur-
face roughness caused by pills and fuzz. Measurement
of the number, area, and density of pills is followed by
localization of pills, which is achieved by finding the ref-
erence fabric surface in terms of wavelet reconstruction.

Textile Res. J. 75(11), 761–770 (2005) DOI: 10.1177/0040517505059209 © 2005 SAGE Publications www.sagepublications.com
762 Textile Research Journal

Feature vectors which consist of five properties – fractal

Scan the fabric surface that pills exist
dimension, surface average mean curvature, pill number,
pill area, and pill density – are taken as the bases for pat-
tern classifiers. Our research employs a Karhunen–Loève
Construct 2-D grid mesh data
(K–L) transform coupled with pattern classifiers to make
the dimensional reductions for five pilling properties and Filtering
to enhance the applicability of the system. The experi- Calculate the fractal dimension and
mental results show that the new fabric pilling evaluation the surface average mean curvature
Localization of pills by
system offers effective and feasible method that reflects
wavelet reconstruction
the 3-D fabric surface properties as well as the pilling Measure the number, area, and population
characteristics. density of pills
x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 Property vectors
Methods
Perform the K-L transform
System and Samples
y1 Principal axis vectors
We made fabric samples with pills using plain fabrics,
Classifier
which consist of 75% wool and 25% nylon. Fabric samples
were cut into approximately 105 mm squares and sub-
jected to laboratory abrasion on a random tumble pilling Grade of fabric pilling
tester according to the ASTM D3512-82. In order to pro-
vide fabric pilling samples with different pilling grades, Figure 2. Flow diagram of our method.
we changed the running time of the pilling tester from
0 to 60 minutes. Ten samples were prepared from grade
dimension is calculated by the wavelet-fractal method
1 to grade 5, respectively. The fabric pilling grade was
based on the 2-D discrete wavelet transform, which uses
assigned subjectively by the trained expert. Figure 1 shows
a 256 × 256 mesh of data. For the characterization of
an example of the fabric pilling samples mentioned above.
fabric pilling, it is important to localize the pills on the
The general procedure is presented in the flow diagram
fabric surface. This is achieved by wavelet reconstruction
in Figure 2. The 3-D scanning system was used to scan the
[4], which makes it possible to find a reasonable reference
fabric pilling samples as in the previous study. The number
surface for localizing only pills. Detected pills are charac-
of scanned data points was about 90 000 for the selected
terized by the number, area, and population density. Five
area. The values at the grid points of a uniformly spaced
fabric pilling properties form feature vectors, which are
256 × 256 rectangular mesh superimposed over the points
the input data for the pattern classifier to grade the fabric
are estimated from the nearest-neighbor interpolation to
pilling. We dimensionally reduced the five pilling prop-
make it easier to effectively process the bulk of the data
erty vectors using a K–L transform. We then trained and
by a mathematical method. Noise that might be attributed
tested the dimensionally reduced principal axis vector for
to discontinuities of mesh grid data and very high fre-
grading the fabric pilling by Bayes, minimum distance,
quency range variation was removed by two-dimensional
k-nearest neighbors, and neural network classifiers.
(2-D) Gaussian filtering of kernel size 15 × 15 with stan-
dard deviation 3. It was reported in our earlier study that
Pilling Simulation and Localization
the fractal dimension (FD) and the surface average mean
curvature (SAMC) are the main descriptors to represent The localization of the pills by wavelet reconstruc-
the general surface properties of the fabric. The fractal tion is validated on the basis of the simulated surface

Figure 1. Example of fabric pilling samples from grade 1 to grade 5.

November 2005
with pills. The surface model with known fractal dimen-
sion (e.g. FD = 2.1) is reconstructed using a Fractional
Brownian Motion with interpolation method (FBMi ). Xin
et al. [13] assumed that the actual pills have the shape of
a 2-D Gaussian function and suggested the 2-D Gaussian
fit theory for pill detection. Therefore, we used the 2-D
Gaussian function to simulate the pills on the fractal sur-
face with relatively low fractal dimension. The equation
for the 2-D Gaussian is


(xi − x0 )2 (yi − y0 )2
zi = A exp − − ,
2σx2 2σy2
where A is the amplitude, (x0 ,y0 ) are the positions, and σ x
and σ y are the standard deviations in the two directions.
Table I shows properties of simulated pilling surfaces.
The fractal surface has different numbers and size of pills
according to the pilling severity. It is based on the assump-
tion that as the pilling increases in severity, the number and
area of pills increase. The simulated pills are positioned
randomly.
We make use of wavelet reconstruction principle to
find a precise reference surface for a 3-D surface, locate
only the pills, and then determine the pilling characteris-
tics. The reference surface is composed of low-frequency
components characterizing the surface and thus con-
structed through the inverse wavelet transform with
approximate coefficients at the best decomposition level.
Without careful treatment to make the fabric surface even,
the pills can only be detected easily if the reference sur-
face is found by wavelet reconstruction. The process of
calculating the wavelet reference surface is as follows.
Let the two-dimensional surface be f (x,y)
c0,n1 ,n2 = f (n1 T , n2 T ) , threshold zth to localize pills only in the difference surface
where f (n1 T , n2 T )(n1 , n2 = 1, 2, . . . , M, respectively)
are discrete sampling data, M is the number of data points
and T is sampling distance. T is 1 since we use discrete
mesh grid data. For 1 ≤ j ≤ J(decomposition level),
 the coefficient that controls threshold selection. We chose
cj,n1 ,n2 = cj−1,k1 ,k2 hk1 −2n1 hk2 −2n2
k1 ,k2 ∈Z
763

h
dj,n = cj−1,k1 ,k2 hk1 −2n1 gk2 −2n2 ,
1 ,n2
k1 ,k2 ∈Z

v
dj,n 1 ,n2
= cj−1,k1 ,k2 gk1 −2n1 hk2 −2n2 ,
k1 ,k2 ∈Z

d
dj,n 1 ,n2
= cj−1,k1 ,k2 gk1 −2n1 gk2 −2n2 ,
k1 ,k2 ∈Z
where cj,n1 ,n2 are smooth components at decomposition
level j, dj,n1 ,n2 detail components in direction correspond-
ing to superscript (h, v, and d mean horizontal, vertical,
and diagonal directions, respectively.), {hn } is the low-pass
filter, and {gn } is the high-pass filter of the wavelet trans-
form. It is important to select the proper decomposition
level of wavelet reconstruction to find an appropriate ref-
erence surface and ultimately obtain the surface on which
the pills are emphasized.
i
dj,n 1 ,n2
= 0(i = h,v,d; j = 1, 2, . . . , J) ,
where J means the best decomposition level to detect pills.
All the detailed coefficients are set to zero from decom-
position level J to 1 and a 2-D inverse discrete wavelet
transform is performed. The height difference between the
reference surface and the Gaussian-filtered surface makes
the presence of pills even clearer.
f2 (n1 T , n2 T ) = f (n1 T , n2 T ) − f1 (n1 T , n2 T ) ,
where f1 (n1 T , n2 T ) is the restored surface from the best
decomposition level J and f2 (n1 T , n2 T ) is the surface on
which the pills are emphasized. In our investigation, it
was found that the decomposition level 4 was effective for
wavelet reconstruction when a Daubechies wavelet base
with a vanishing moment 2 was used. We calculated the
f2 (n1 T , n2 T ) according to the formula
zth = z̄ + λσ ,
where z̄ is mean height of the surface f2 (n1 T , n2 T ) and λ is
, λ = 3 in this study. The surfaces thresholded by means
of zth can be treated as a binary image. Objects below five

Table I. Properties of simulated pilling surfaces.a

Degree of pilling
Area Density
Big Medium Small FD SAMC No. of pills (in pixels) ×10−5

Severe 10 20 20 2.3149 0.0016 49.5 1482 24.6

Moderate 5 15 10 2.2675 0.0014 30 1087 5.95
Light 0 10 5 2.2147 0.0012 14.9 483 2.80
a FD, fractal dimension calculated by 3DSWTMhv , SAMC, surface average mean curvature.
764 Textile Research Journal

Figure 3. Example to detect pills from the simulated pilling surface by wavelet reconstruction: (a) 3-D graph of simulated severe pilling surface,
(b) range image of (a), (c) reference surface of (a) obtained by wavelet reconstruction, (d) range image of (c), (e) segmented and counted pills.

pixels are considered as noise and removed in a binary
image, from which the pilling characteristics such as the
number, area, and population density of pills can be finally
determined.
Figure 3 illustrates an example to detect pills from the
simulated severe pilling surface by wavelet reconstruction.
Figure 3b and 3d are range images, in which gray scale is
proportional to elevation.
and the surface average mean curvature, which describes
the differences in surface roughness.
In our earlier study, we proposed the discrete wavelet
transform using 3-D surface data to obtain the fractal
dimension (3DSWTMhv ) [8]. The fractal dimensions cal-
culated by this method show a linear relationship over
a wide span of theoretical fractal dimensions with little
error.

2
N−j
2
N−j  
 t 
dj,n1 ,n2 
Pilling Features n1 =1 n2 =1 ∗
djt = = Emin 2−j(α+1) t = h,v,d .
Surface Roughness Properties 2N−j · 2N−j

Due to the action of the pilling motion the fabric sur-
faces not only have clear pills but they also have fuzz and
small pills and it is difficult to decide whether these are
really pills. Hence, the fabric surface roughness needs to
be evaluated to better understand the pilling phenomena
of the fabric. We present two parameters, which are the
fractal dimension calculated by the wavelet-fractal method
Here djh represents the horizontal information, djv
the vertical information, djd the diagonal information of
∗
a 3-D surface, Emin a constant, and α(0 < α < 1) is
the Lipschitz exponent. When djt (t = h,v,d) is plotted
against j on a double logarithmic scale, a linear regression
with a slope −(α + 1) can be obtained using a least-
square fit algorithm. Therefore, the fractal dimension of
November 2005 765

the surface is principal axis vectors. Initially,  can be obtained from

the following equation:
FD = 3 − α = 3 + (slope + 1) = 4 + slope .
Rφj = λj φj ,
The two fractal dimensions calculated using the hor-
izontal and vertical information are averaged to obtain a where R is the autocorrelation matrix for class one to M,
single value. The surface average mean curvature (SAMC) φ j are the orthonormal eigenvectors of R, and λj are the
is given by eigenvalues of R.
The K–L transform can be summarized as follows:
1  2
SAMC = Hi,j ,
N2 i j Step 1: Compute the autocorrelation matrix R defined as,

where Hi,j is the mean curvature at each point of a surface. 

M
R= P(ωi )E xi xi ,
i=1
Pilling Parameters
In the visual evaluation of pilling, judges tend to rate the where P(ωi ) is the a priori-probability of occur-
pilling appearance of a fabric by taking pill properties such rence of the ith class, E{xi xi } is the expected value
as area, number, and density into account. After threshold- of all observations in the class ωi . The parame-
ing the fabric surface with the height threshold value zth , ter P(ωi ) is estimated by the ratio of the number
the fabric surface can be treated as a binary image. In of samples in the class ωi to the total number of
this binary image, all pilling phenomena can be measured samples.
using the image analysis techniques. Step 2: Obtain the eigenvalues and corresponding eigen-
The pill number Pnum is an important factor influencing vectors of R.
the pilling appearance. It can be measured by counting Step 3: Form the transformation matrix  from the m
the number of objects in the binary image. The area of eigenvectors corresponding to the largest eigen-
one pill is expressed by the number of pixels that make values of R, as indicated in the following,
up the pill. The total area of pills Parea is evaluated. Pill
density Pden is also an essential quantity to investigate in a  = (φ1 , φ2 , . . . , φm ) .
pilled sample. Xu [14] suggested a more rational estima-
tor of pill density regardless of clumping of pills. First, a Step 4: Compute the coefficients from the following
number of random points are generated inside the binary equation,
image. At each of these points, a pill closest to the point is
searched, and the distance ri between this pill and the point y i =  x i .
is calculated. Then the next pill nearest this point is found,
and the distance between these two pills xi is also calcu- Since  is an m×n matrix and x is an n-vector, we
lated. After all the n random points have been counted, see that, if m < n, the yi are transformed vectors
the population density estimator Pden can be derived as of lower dimensionality.
follows.
√ To prepare the data for the pattern classification, nor-
2n malization of raw data was employed.
Pden =   .
A commonly used type of normalization scales the axes
π (ri ) (xi2 )
2
so that all the variables subsequently have zero mean and
unit variance.
The right-hand columns of Table I show the pilling
features of the simulated pilling surfaces. xij − x̄j
Xij = ,
Sj
Pilling Grading
K–L Transform 
n
where xij is the ith element of the jth feature, x̄j = 1
n
xij ,
i=1
The K–L transform [9, 12] can provide the dimension-
reducing matrix  through a learning process, and then 
n
and Sj = 1
n−1
(xij − x̄j )2 .
the training set can turn the transfer property vectors into i=1
766
Classification
Four classification methods, namely Bayes, minimum
distance, k-nearest neighbors, and neural network clas-
sifiers, were used to grade the degree of pilling. There
are many comprehensive reports [5, 12] written on this
method, therefore, only a short description is given here.
Feature vectors of eight samples of each pilling grade were
fed into a classifier as a training set and the remaining two
feature vectors were used as a testing set.
1. Bayes Classifier (BC)
Let the decision function
di (x) = ln p(x | ωi ) + ln P(ωi ) , hj (Ij ) =
where x is a n-component pattern vector and p(x | ωi )
is the probability density function. The Bayes classifier
assigns a pattern x to class ωi if di (x) > dj (x)( j  = i). It is
often possible to estimate the probability density function
by using a general multivariate normal density function.
1 trained the neural network which has the input layer with
p(x | ωi ) =
(2π)n/2 |Ci |1/2
1 Neural network classifier assigns a pattern x to the closet
× exp − (x − mi ) Ci−1 (x − mi ) ,
2 integer class to the value of output node.
where mi is the n-component mean vector, Ci is the n-by-
n covariance matrix, and |Ci | is the determinant of Ci . In
this study, mi and Ci are estimated from the sample mean
and sample covariance, respectively. P(ωi ) is assumed to
be the same for all the classes.
2. Minimum Distance Classifier (MDC)
Let us assume that there are M pattern classes and
these classes can be represented by prototype patterns
z1 , z2 , . . . , zM . The Euclidean distance between an arbi-
trary pattern vector x and the ith prototype is given by
 range images of difference surface data from grade 1 to
di = x − zi  = (x − zi ) (x − zi ) .
A minimum distance classifier computes the distance
from a pattern x of unknown classification to the prototype
of each class, and assigns the pattern to the class to which
it is closest. In other words, x is assigned to class wi if
di < dj , for all j  = i.
3. k-Nearest Neighbors Classifier (kNNC)
In kNN, the unknown pattern is placed in a class with
most of the k-nearest neighbors in the training set. Statisti-
cally more reliable results can be achieved by using more
than one nearest neighbor. In this study, k = 5 suffices.
Textile Research Journal
4. Neural Network Classifier (NNC)
One of the most common types of neural network is
a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) network, which consists
of a large number of simple interconnected structurally
identical processing elements. The MLP network consists
of units (neurons) arranged so that the output of every
neuron in one layer feeds into the input of every neuron
in the next layer. Each unit multiplies its inputs by its
weights and then sums the results to derive a single value
Ij . The unit output (hj (Ij )) can be calculated after the value
passes through a non-linear activation function, which is
typically represented by a sigmoid form,
1
,
1 + exp[−(Ij + θj )/θ0 ]
where Ij represents the input to the activation element of
each node in layer j of the network, θj is an offset, and
θ0 controls the shape of the function. Back-propagation
algorithm is used to find neural network weights so that
its outputs coincide with a known target. In this study, we
five nodes equivalent to five pilling features, the output
layer with one node, and one hidden layer with 15 nodes.
Results and Discussion
We confirmed that the localization of pills by wavelet
reconstruction is effective in the simulated surface with
pills. Therefore, it can be expected that the effect of this
method will be similar to or even better than that in real
fabrics after undergoing the pilling tester. As shown in
Figure 4b, pills are emphasized in the range images of
difference surface data f2 (n1 T , n2 T ) between the origi-
nal surface data and the reconstructed surface data from
the best decomposition level. The results are less affected
by the careful treatment of fabric samples. Pills in the
grade 4 are more enhanced because there is a relatively
large difference between the height of the pills and the fab-
ric structure. The range image of difference surface data
of grade 5 appears more complex, but actually it means
that there are no large differences in the height from one
to another.
The five pilling features, which are fractal dimension,
surface average mean curvature, pill number, pill area, and
population density of pills, corresponding to the pilling
grade are shown in Figure 5. As expected, all the pilling
features show a tendency to decrease with increasing
pilling grade even though there is some overlapping in
the range from grade 1 to grade 3. In our investigation, we
November 2005
Figure 4. Examples to detect and localize pills: (a) range images
of 3-D surface data of fabric pilling samples from grade 1 to grade 5,
(b) range images of pills-emphasized surface by wavelet reconstruction,
(c) binary images for pills to be localized.
dimensionally reduced the five pilling features into one
principal axis vector using a K–L transform. The forty
feature vectors are used as training sets in developing the
fabric pilling evaluation system. The eight feature vec-
tors are extracted from eight samples of each grade. The
remaining two feature vectors of each grade are used as
test sets. Since the computational cost of most pattern clas-
sification techniques increases rapidly with the number of
variables, it is desirable to minimize this number. There-
fore, the principal axis vector corresponding to the largest
eigenvalue should be adopted preferentially as the transfer
matrix . Table II shows the eigenvalues of the R matrix
of the training samples and their corresponding orthonor-
mal eigenvectors. Expanding the transfer matrix  will
767
provide the linear correlation between the principal axis
vector (PAV ) and pilling feature vectors. The coefficients
demonstrate that each pilling feature has a similar effect
on the pilling grading.
PAV = 0.4531FD + 0.4473SAMC + 0.4593Pnum
+ 0.4591Parea + 0.4158Pden .
Table III shows the classification accuracy of four types of
classifier for testing sets. Most of the errors are attributed
to overlapping of pilling features between grade 2 and
grade 3, but note that there is a relatively large gap in the
SAMC value between grade 2 and grade 3, as shown in
Figure 5. If necessary, weighting any features can be used
to take into consideration of the different importance of
variables in grading the degree of pilling. For that reason,
the coefficient of SAMC is weighted by 1.5.
PAV  = 0.4531FD + 0.6709SDMC + 0.4593Pnum
+ 0.4591Parea + 0.4158Pden .
The classification accuracy is improved after weighting
the transfer matrix as shown in the right-hand columns of
Table III. This gives rise to the expansion of difference
of PAV between grades as shown in Figure 6. Centered
around grade 3, the width of the differences of PAV show
greater increases after weighting the transfer matrix than
do those with no weighting. Table IV shows classifica-
tion results of test sets using BC, MDC, kNNC, and NNC.
Before weighting the transfer matrix, all the classifiers
wrongly assign grade 3 sample Te32 to grade 2. Weight-
ing the coefficient corresponding to SAMC, which shows
relatively large differences between grade 2 and grade 3, in
the transfer matrix leads to 100% classification accuracy
for all test sets except the Bayes classifier.
There is no need to repeat the training process once
the principal axis vector (PAV ) from the training sets has
been obtained by K–L transform and the parameters of
the classifiers are set. To make the grading more precise,
it is important to include more training feature vectors, in
which all the pilling properties are widely covered.
Conclusions
We have developed this fabric pilling evaluation system
based on the fabric surface roughness and pilling charac-
teristics. All the 3-D fabric surface data were obtained
using a 3-D scanning system with greater accuracy. The
degree of fabric surface roughness is described with the
fractal dimension calculated by the wavelet-fractal method
and the surface average mean curvature, which were
shown to be good descriptors of fabric surface roughness
768 Textile Research Journal

Figure 5. Pilling features corresponding to the pilling grade.

November 2005 769

Table II. Eigenvalues and eigenvectors for autocorrelation matrix R.

1 2 3 4 5

Eigenvalue 4.4071 0.2996 0.0870 0.0563 0.0249

Eigenvectors 0.4531 0.1632 −0.8075 −0.2850 0.1867
0.4473 0.4791 0.0320 0.5739 −0.4900
0.4593 −0.1009 0.3721 −0.6692 −0.4388
0.4591 0.2223 0.4521 0.0545 0.7297
0.4158 −0.8272 −0.0647 0.3724 0.0026

Table III. Classification accuracy of classifiers before and after Table IV. Classification results of test sets.
weighting the transfer matrix.
No weighting Weighting
Before weighting After weighting
Sample BC MDC kNNC NNC BC MDC kNNC NNC
Classifier Train Test Train Test
Te11 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
BC 97.5 90 100 90 Te12 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
MDC 97.5 90 100 100 Te21 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
kNNC 97.5 90 100 100 Te22 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
NNC 97.5 90 100 100 Te31 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
Te32 2 2 2 2 2 3 3 3
Te41 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Te42 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
Te51 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
in our earlier study. Localization and characterization of Te52 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5
pills by wavelet reconstruction were validated using the
simulated pilling surfaces with a 2-D Gaussian function
and fractal surface, and were proven to be effective. The
number, area, and population density of pills, which are The experimental results show that it is possible to eval-
sensitive to pilling grading by judges, were extracted as uate the fabric pilling comprehensively using the system
pilling characteristics. The newly developed system suc- developed in this study.
cessfully grades the degree of pilling through the feature
selection and dimensional reduction using a K–L trans- Acknowledgment
form coupled with Bayes, minimum distance, k-nearest This work was supported by the SRC/ERC program of
neighbors, and neural network classifiers. Weighting the MOST/KOSEF (R11-2005-065).
coefficients of the transfer matrix corresponding to impor-
tant features in grading the pilling improved the results.
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