Automatic segmentation of ceramic materials with relaxed possibilistic c-means clustering for defect detection

Abstract

Automatic inspection system is necessary for reliable quality control if ceramic materials to avoid operator subjectivity and fatigue in visual inspection. Automatic segmentation from material's image is then the most important process to develop such an inspection system. In this paper, we propose a Possibilistic C-Means pixel clustering algorithm with fuzzy stretching to form the defect object in segmentation. In experiment using 50 images containing a certain amount of defects, the proposed method was successful in 49 cases or 98% of opportunities. That performance is roughly twice better than that of standard K-means clustering in defect object formation.