Importance

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Abstract

An image processing technique for detecting and measuring the size of bruises on fruit, such as apples, is disclosed. A line scan camera is employed to obtain a gray level image of each piece of fruit as it is rotated in front of the camera. The image is digitized, and transferred to a computer which performs a plurality of steps on the image to determine the sizes of any bruises on the fruit from the gray level data. The image data is filtered to remove interference due to pixel-to-pixel variations in the camera, background noise, etc., and is then thresholded to obtain a binary image representation. Clusters of zeros in the resulting binary image that are representative of potential bruises are analyzed to determine their size and shape. If the shape of the cluster is nearly circular, it is determined to be a bruise. From this information, the amount of bruise area on the fruit may be determined, and the fruit graded accordingly.

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First Claim