Cellulose Fibre Identification through Color Vectors of Stained Fibre

Simple, rapid staining analytical methods with visual color assessment are the most used in practice, but they involve problems including subjective error, low accuracy, qualitative results, and the necessity of using many kinds of stains and a great deal of morphology information for correct identification. A method of objective fiber identification using color vectors of a microscan from stained fibre digital photography is described in this report. A model set of cellulose fibres was prepared: groundwood; sulphate pulp; Whatman paper; and rag fibres. The objective micro-colorimetric method, using RGB (red, green, blue) vectors with discriminatory analysis, reduced the number of stains to 1; requires no morphological information; and the discriminatory power (dp,) of this approach is up to 95 to 100% of correctly identified unknown samples with one color vector R or B. A dp value of 100% was achieved when using 2-P or 3-P combinations of R, G, and B.