An evaluation of scale and noise sensitivity of fibre orientation estimation in volume images

Abstract

Fibre orientation influences many important properties of fibre-based materials, for example, strength and stiffness. Fibre orientation and the orientation anisotropy in paper and other wood fibre-based materials have previously been estimated using two-dimensional images. Recently, we presented a method for estimating the three-dimensional fibre orientation in volume images based on local orientation estimates. Here, we present an evaluation of the method with respect to scale and noise sensitivity. The evaluation is performed for both tubular and solid fibres. We also present a new method for automatic scale selection for solid fibres. The method is based on a segmentation of the fibres that also provides an estimate of the fibre dimension distribution in an image. The results show that the fibre orientation estimation performs well both in noisy images and at different scales. The presented results can be used as a guide to select appropriate parameters for the method when it is applied to real data. The applicability of the fibre orientation estimation to fibre-based materials with solid fibres is demonstrated for a volume image of a press felt acquired with X-ray microtomography. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.