Texture classification via area-scale analysis of raking light images

An image processing algorithm for photographic and inkjet paper texture classification is developed based on area-scale fractal analysis. This analysis has been applied in surface metrology, and relies on the fact that the measured area of a surface depends on the scale of observation. By comparing relative areas at various scales, the technique computes a measure of the topological similarity of two surfaces. Results show the algorithm is successful in detecting affinities among similarity groupings within a dataset of silver gelatin photographic papers and a dataset of inkjet papers.