JANUARY 2005 9

Color and Pattern Analysis of Printed Fabric by an Unsupervised

Clustering Method
CHUNG-FENG JEFFREY KUO, CHUNG-YANG SHIH, CHIH-YUAN KAO, AND JIUNN-YIH LEE
Intelligence Control and Simulation Laboratory, Department of Polymer Engineering, National Taiwan
University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China

ABSTRACT
In this paper, a novel approach to color and pattern analysis is proposed for printed
fabric. An unsupervised analysis method is developed using a fuzzy C-means (FCM)
clustering algorithm and a specific cluster-validity criterion (SC criterion). First, the printed
fabric is captured by a color scanner and converted into full color digital files, then the
mean filter is used to smooth the color of the image. The search for good cluster numbers
is made by the SC criterion, and the corresponding color clusters are obtained based on the
FCM clustering algorithm. Finally, the color and pattern features of the printed fabric are
calculated. The experimental results show that this approach is very suitable for analyzing
the colors and patterns of printed fabrics.

Although digital image analysis techniques for fabrics
have progressed, the focus has been mainly on analyzing
gray-scale fabric images. However, since the visual per-
ception of color images is much more important than that
of gray-scale images, it is highly desirable to develop an
automatic recognition system of multicolor weaves using
color image analysis techniques [1, 3].
Color and pattern are two key issues of textile appear-
ance. They not only determine the value of the fabric, but
they also act as a necessary discriminative guide for
different fabrics, especially printed ones. Unlike woven
fabrics, the color patterns of printed fabrics can only be
described by the color numbers, color values, and pat-
terns. In addition, the patterns of printed fabrics vary,
causing difficulties when describing these patterns with
words or even simpler ways. This variety of printed
be analyzed automatically for color numbers, color val-
ues, and area percentages of certain colors. And for the
patterns formed by each color, we can analyze the sta-
tistical value of numbers, areas, centers and other related
pattern characteristics.
Research Methods
FUZZY C-MEANS CLUSTERING METHOD
The clustering method attempts to assess the relation-
ships between patterns of a data set by organizing the
patterns into clusters. We use FCM clustering [2] to op-
timize the following objective function:

冘 冘u
c n
patterns also causes difficulties with automation, and it
means that all analysis, recognition, and comparison J⫽ ij
m
d ij2 (1)
i⫽1 j⫽1
needs to be done manually. Moreover, due to the influ-
ence of the undulating weave on the fabric’s appearance,
the colors displayed are more complex than other ordi- where c is the number of clusters, uij ⑀ [0,1] expresses the
nary flat materials, leading to complications with color membership degree of the data point xj belonging to the
recognition. In addition, the technique of color image ith fuzzy group, dij ⫽ 储Wi ⫺ Xj储 is the Euclidean distance
processing is still at a premature stage. Therefore, studies between the ith cluster center wi and the jth data point xj
of automatic analysis systems for colored fabrics have hit and m ⑀ (1, ⬁) is a weighting exponent that influences the
a roadblock. fuzziness of the clusters [5].
In this paper, we propose an unsupervised clustering This FCM algorithm is implemented as follows:
method to analyze colors and patterns on printed fabrics. 1. Choose the number of clusters c, the weighting
Without using samples or a priori information about data exponent to influence the fuzziness of the clusters,
structures, the clustering algorithms attempt to partition and the terminative precision ␧.
the data set into clusters, such that data within a cluster 2. Initialize the fuzzy C-partition and set the iteration
are more similar to each other than to those belonging to counter to t ⫽ 1.
different clusters. The colors on printed fabrics can thus 3. Update the centers matrix

Textile Res. J. 75(1), 9 –12 (2005) 0040-5175/$15.00

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10 TEXTILE RESEARCH JOURNAL

k ⫽ r ⫹ i, and
冘
n

共u ij *兲 mx j
冘冉 1max
ⱕ i ⱕ c冊
n 2
j⫽1 u i ij
wi ⫽

冘共u *兲
n
j⫽1
m FC ⫽ .

冘
ij
n
j⫽1 maxi uij
1ⱕiⱕc
for 1 ⱕ i ⱕ c, and the memberships degree matrix j⫽1

(U),
The maximum SC for a given number of clusters c is

冋 册
冘储储 xx ⫺⫺ ww 储储
c 2/共m⫺1兲
j i
u ij ⫽
k⫽1 j k
4. If 兩U(t ⫹ 1) ⫺ U(t)兩 ⬍⫽ ␧ stop, otherwise t ⫽ t ⫹ 1,
therefore go to step 3.
CLUSTER-VALIDITY ANALYSIS
The aim of the classification is to generate a well-
defined C-partition that is as close as possible to the
natural structure of the data. The specific cluster-validity
criterion (SC) is used to measure the quality of the fuzzy
C-partitions provided by the fuzzy clustering algorithm.
This cluster-validity is based on two functions. The first
function calculates the ratio by considering geometric
and fuzzy membership properties. The second function
evaluates it by using only the properties of fuzzy mem-
berships. In this paper, we adopt the SC cluster-validity
index introduced by Zahid et al. [6]:
S FS
SC ⫽ ⫺
␲ FC
where
⫺1 expected to detect a well-defined fuzzy c-partition.
2/共m⫺1兲 .
Experimental Analysis
The experimental material is a four-color printed fab-
ric, 7 in. ⫻ 7 in., and the Matlab [4] is the software tool
used to develop this system. An Epson 2400 Photo
scanner with a resolution of 96 dpi digitizes the printed
fabric image into a full-color model. In the color space,
we can refer to a single pixel’s red, green, and blue
values as a color pixel vector ⫺ (R, G, B). The captured
image consists of 672 ⫻ 672 pixels. In order to reduce
the color differentiation caused by the undulating weave
structure on the fabric’s appearance, the mean filters are
used to process the scanned full-color image.
UNSUPERVISED CLUSTERING STRATEGY
The search for good clustering takes the following
iteration steps:
1. Initial setting: c ⫽ 2, cmax ⫽ 10.
2. Use the FCM algorithm (m ⫽ 2, ␧ ⫽ 0.00001) to
, (2)
compute the cluster centers matrix, memberships
degree matrix, and SC.
3. Let c ⫽ c ⫹ 1; if c ⱕ cmax then go to step 2.

冘储w ⫺ w៮ 储
c According to the definition above, the maximum SC
i value is used to examine which cluster number set is
i⫽1 better; that is, how many color clusters should the colors
S⫽ ,
c be divided into. We also record the fuzzy clustering
centers matrix and the memberships degree matrix of the
w៮ is the mean of the whole data set, best cluster number to produce a pixel clustering distri-
bution diagram for follow-up color and pattern analysis.
冘共u 兲 储 x ⫺ w 储
n
m 2 The pixel clustering distribution diagram is created by
ij j i

冘
c
i⫽1
drawing pixels of each cluster on a new picture.
␲⫽ ,

冘u
n
i⫽1 COLOR AND PATTERN ANALYSIS
ij
j⫽1 For color characteristic analysis, the color value is
obtained from the cluster center of the best cluster num-

冘min共u , u 兲
n
bers. Sum the area of each cluster’s pixel for the area
2
ij kj percentage of the color. For pattern analysis, first obtain
冘冘
c⫺1 c⫺i
j⫽1
FS ⫽ , the pattern of the printed fabric by drawing pixels of each

冘min共u , u 兲
i⫽1 r⫽1
n cluster on a new picture. Then, use the morphology
ij kj operation of erosion and dilation to remove lines or
j⫽1 spots, which are classified as incorrect, on the pattern

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JANUARY 2005 11

edges caused by the processing of mean filters. Next, TABLE I. Some SC indices for different cluster numbers.
calculate the numbers and the center point locations of Cluster number
individual patterns formed by each cluster. However, in
order to avoid the influence of incomplete individual 2 4 6 8 10
patterns on the image fringes upon the analysis, eliminate Four-color printed fabric 0.40 9.57 6.12 3.49 3.12
these individual patterns before figuring out their pattern
characteristic values. Finally, calculate these character-
istic values of the individual patterns, including Area (the
actual number of pixels in the single pattern), Extent (the
Area divided by the area of the bounding box), Orienta-
tion (the angle between the x-axis and the major axis of
the ellipse that has the same second-moments as the
single pattern), and Eccentricity (the ratio of the distance
between the foci of the ellipse and its major axis length).
An ellipse whose Eccentricity is 0 is actually a circle,
while an ellipse whose Eccentricity is 1 is a line segment.

Results and Discussion

Figure 1 shows the color digital image of the four-
color printed fabric with 672 ⫻ 672 pixels captured by a
color scanner. By way of statistics, the RGB values of
29,272 pixels in the images are different. After the mean
filters process, the color numbers are reduced to 15,372.
Then, take these colors to form color value matrices and
process the FCM clustering of the color value. From Table
I, the color number of the four-color printed fabric is 4; FIGURE 2. Clustering results for different cluster numbers.
this is because, among the cluster number sets 2 to 10,
the cluster number equal to 4 has the highest SC index
value. In addition, mark the location of each cluster of Figure 3 shows the segmentation of the patterns that
pixels on Figure 2 to form the pattern that consists of are formed by the pixels of cluster 1, which already
color clusters. Compared to Figure 1, the clustering re- removes the incomplete individual patterns on the image
sult conforms to the color pattern of the fabric. fringes. Also, mark the central point of each individual

FIGURE 1. Full-color digital image of printed fabric. FIGURE 3. Segmentation of cluster 1.

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12 TEXTILE RESEARCH JOURNAL

pattern shown as the ⫹ symbol on the figure and the
location of the box that surrounds this pattern. Finally,
mark the related color characteristic values and pattern
characteristic values on Table II. From the mean and
standard deviation of the Area, Extent, Orientation, and
Eccentricity values, the patterns of these four clusters
consist of rectangles of similar sizes.
TABLE II. Color and pattern characteristics of printed fabric
clustering algorithm and the SC clusters-validity index, is
very effective for analyzing the color characteristics and
pattern characteristics of printed fabrics automatically.
We have proved that this method can overcome the
difficulties of manual recognition and word descriptions
of color pattern characteristics of a printed fabric. In addi-
tion, since we use personal computers and color scanners
for automatic analysis and recognition of color printed
fabrics, this study is very practical and economical.

Features Itemsa Cluster 1 Cluster 2 Cluster 3 Cluster 4

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