Abstract: The present invention relates to a digital image analysis method for automatically identifying an object in a background, characterizing the object by color by determining at least one interior point of the object, and displaying the object on a monitor in color corresponding to the natural color of the object and a digital image analysis method for displaying an object on a monitor in color. The methods are adaptive in that they create a new pallette for each image being processed. The system used to implement the methods is cost effective in that a black-and-white image processing board can be used in conjunction with a color filter and a color monitor.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a method of identifying and characterizing, by color, at least one valid object having at least one predetermined attribute value in a background. The method generates a plurality of images of a candidate object and the background, where each image is one of three primary color images or a black-and-white image. The method searches the image for a candidate object using an automatically calculated threshold gray level and determines the interior points of the candidate object. The method further determines the gray level value of the interior points in the image and calculates a color parameter for the interior points. The method thus enables one to characterize the candidate object by the color parameter and validate the candidate object having the valid object predetermined attribute value.

Abstract: A method and apparatus for analyzing the appearance features of a surface with a spatially coherent beam of uniformly distributed collimated polychromatic light that is directed through a beam limiting means (or mask) and onto the surface at an acute angle of incidence. A scanned imaging detector, translatable through a sequence of focal plane positions along the optic axis between the mask and surface, measures the reflectance values associated with the scanned pixel intensities. After standardization, the scan intensity values are Fourier transformed into the spatial frequency domain to obtain an optical transfer function (OTF) and power and amplitude spectra. The visual spatial frequency response characteristic V(f) and standard psychophysical methodology is applied to mathematically determine surface appearance attributes such as orange peel, microwrinkle, cracks and crazes, distinctness of image (DOI), gloss, haze, contrast, luster, fog and texture.