Automatic Measurement of Concentrated Spherical Particles by Use of Image Processing

Abstract

A method was developed to detect and measure transparent spherical particles concentrated in the picture. First, candidates of the contour lines of the particles are determined by a Marr-Hildreth filter. Then, real contour lines are recognized by evaluating the first derivative on every contour line. The inscribed-circle method was improved to recognize each particle from the overlapped particle image. An example for transparent polymer particles showed that the ratio of erroneous detection is less than 5 percent. This method can be applied to on-line measurement.