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.