Objective measurement of water repellency of fabric using image analysis (I) - Methodology of image processing

A methodology for the objective evaluation of water repellency is studied using image analysis of the sprayed pattern on woven fabrics according to a standard spray test (AATCC Test Method 22-2001). The wet area ratio obtained from the spray standard test ranking is found to be exponentially related with its water repellency rating. Mean filtering is used to remove the effect of weave texture and the transmitted light through interyarn spaces. The ring frame of the instrument and wet region are recognized using Otsu thresholding technique. And Hough transform and outline operation are used to obtain the size and position of the ring frame. The objective assessment of the water repellency using image processing can reduce unnecessary confusion in the subjective determination of the water repellency.