Evaluating Carpet Appearance Loss: Periodicity and Tuft Placement

Changes in carpet appearance brought about by mechanical wear may be evaluated with respect to changes in heterogeneous image properties, e.g., periodicity and tuft placement. In this paper, we discuss using gray-scale image analysis to measure texture periodicity and tuft spatial distribution. The techniques described are appropriate for "ordered" textures with relatively well defined objects. We use the gravity centers of local intensity maxima to indicate the position of tuft centers. The placement of these points may then be analyzed with respect to average distance, density, and spatial pattern. Our samples show that mechanical wear causes increased average tuft-to-tuft distance, decreased spatial density, and a tendency towards randomness.