Soil release corresponds to the efficacy of the fabric in releasing stains after laundering, and shrinkage essentially quantifies the dimensional changes in the fabric post laundering. The invention comprises a machine vision that generates simultaneous, automatic and objective measurements of soil release and shrinkage in fabrics.
Competitive Advantages
This invention solves the problems of the high level of technician involvement in soil release measurement, which tends to produce subjective and non-repeatable measurements. In addition, AATCC test method 130 that is prescribed for oily stains, does not extend well to colored stains, as the process of grading a colored stain using a gray level replica is inherently flawed.
background information / patents / publications
The afore-mentioned machine vision system consists of a (i) image acquisition system, (ii) sample preparation template with protocols, (iii) high end desktop computer consisting of NVIDIA’s General Purpose Graphical Processing Unit (GPU), and (iv) specialized image analysis software developed by researchers at the Applied Vision Laboratory (AVL) and the Fiber and Biopolymer Research Institute (FBRI) at Texas Tech University.
The technology has been reduced to practice and research is on-going to increase the sensitivity and specificity of the device.
http://www.texastech.edu/otc