An Imaging System for Textile Surface Profile based on Silhouette Image Analysis

This paper presents a digital imaging method based on silhouette image analysis to visualize the 3D surface Profile of textile or other flexible materials. A prototype of imaging system consisting of five components was developed: visible lighting source (white backlighting), sample stage, progressive sample feeding equipments, detector (CCD camera) and software. A sequence of silhouette images of textile surface patches could be digitalized progressively when sample passing through the sharp edge of crossbeam in bending status, so that the whole 3D surface profile could be generated by the combination of silhouette height profile of each surface patch in sequence. The proposed method and system enables us to reconstruct the 3D surface profile of the textile materials without colors and textures of them, and therefore this method could be much more effective for the surface characterization and defect analysis than traditional 2D image analysis methods.