Measurement of Particle Shape using Digital Imaging Techniques

This paper presents an investigation into the suitability of imaging based sensors to

measure particle shape and the effects of shape size on measurement consistency, testing the

often used assumption that imaging based particle size analysers are insensitive to changes in

particle shape. The imaging system employed is introduced and the definitions of shape used

here are explained. A number of varying shaped ‘particles’, in the form of static test images,

are observed with the imaging system and the effect of varying shape size on the resulting

measurements is investigated. In general the results suggest that reliable shape measurement is

possible but that the effects of image quantisation do lead to variations in measured quantities

under real-world conditions.