Instrumentation system for objective evaluation of wrinkle appearance in fabrics using a standardized inspection booth

The appliance industry requires a reliable method for wrinkle evaluation in textile materials. This method is necessary to assess the performance of new designs of tumble dryers. In this paper, we describe an objective evaluation system for wrinkle appearance grading based on the digital analysis of luminance images. The system is capable of evaluating wrinkles in real garments using the legacy inspection booth designed for subjective evaluation. Therefore, the results from the objective evaluation of wrinkles can be compared to the historical records. The dependence of luminance on the three-dimensional characteristics of the wrinkles is modeled and discussed. Based on this analysis, we propose a method supported by two descriptors closely related with the wrinkle characteristics as appreciated by trained evaluators. The design incorporates filtering algorithms that eliminate the influence of undulations and the non-uniform illumination. The objective wrinkle evaluation showed high correlation with human experts and robust performance, as demonstrated by the repeatability and reproducibility study.