Image-based Bilateral Beard Method for measuring weight-based short fiber contents in raw cotton and semi-finished slivers

Abstract

In this paper, an economical way for accurately determining weight-based short fiber contents in raw cotton and semi-finished slivers by utilizing special bilateral beard specimens and image processing was introduced. In the specimen preparation, cotton fibers were drawn by a manual device into a sliver, then the sliver was combed to form a bilateral beard specimen, and finally the bilateral beard was scanned to generate a grayscale image from which a relative fiber number curve was extracted. An algorithm for calculating the weight-based short fiber contents based on the curve was proposed. Five types of cottons were repetitively measured to investigate the robustness of the results of [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text], with the weight ratio of fibers shorter than 12.7 and 16 mm, respectively. The results showed that measuring two bilateral beards for each sample could keep the error rate lower than 15%, while four specimens kept the error rate lower than 10%. Compared with AFIS Pro 2, this Image-based Bilateral Beard Method provided results with lower standard deviations and variable coefficients, signifying its analogous or better robustness. In addition, 37 samples from some of the world’s major producing areas were measured by this method and AFIS Pro 2, and a Bland–Altman analysis confirmed a good agreement between the results from the two methods. As only a manual fiber drawing device and an office scanner are needed, this Image-based Bilateral Beard Method is clearly a cheap approach for accurately determining the short fiber contents in raw cotton and semi-finished slivers.

WITHDRAWN: Secondary-approximate reflectivity and fluffiness coupled optical correction algorithm for colored cotton fibrogram of random-beard image method

“…However, HVI cannot provide efficient data for colored cotton and short fiber content (Cai et al 2010;Kelly et al 2018;Kelly 2012) because of ignoring reflectance and absorption. In comparison, the AFIS system uses infrared light and airflow to measure the length of at least 3000 single fibers (Lang et al 2020(Lang et al , 2021Jin et al 2018;. However, its measuring principle is unspecific, especially in the direction and curvature of fibers in the air stream (Bragg and Shofner 1993), resulting in possible underestimation of fiber length (Cui et al 2003;Krifa M 2006), still could be used in color fiber principally.…”

Reflectivity and fluffiness coupled optical algorithm for colored cotton fibrogram of random-beard image method

“…Here, nos 1# and 22# specimens were tested 10 times, and the span lengths L 25 , L 50 , and L 75 were extracted from the relative fiber density curve. Then, according to equation (8), 27 under the significance level a = 0.05, the number of specimens needed to keep the error rate d = 5% was not lower than three, as listed in Table 3. where n represents the number of specimens needed for each sample, t a is the critical value of the t-distribution, CV is the coefficient of variation, and d is the permissible error rate.…”

“…Here, nos 1# and 22# specimens were tested 10 times, and the span lengths L 25 , L 50 , and L 75 were extracted from the relative fiber density curve. Then, according to equation (8), 27 under the significance level a ¼ 0.05, the number of specimens needed to keep the error rate d ¼ 5% was not lower than three, as listed in Table 3.…”

“…The consistency check of the fibrograms of the coupled optical algorithm for RBIM and AFIS was conducted by the Bland-Altman method, 27,29,53 which is usually widely used to evaluate the consistency between two instruments or measurement techniques at the 95% confidence level, as shown in Figure 13. Their horizontal and vertical coordinates represent the mean and difference between the relative densities of fibrograms by the coupled optical algorithm for RBIM (M) and that used for the referred AFIS (R), respectively.…”

“…24,25 It was often employed as a standard method for other methods in the literature. [26][27][28][29] As AFIS can measure colored fiber length in principle, it could also be applied as a reference for the new method.…”