Patent ID: 7142693

Claim:
A method of analysis of a sample of cotton which includes diverse elements comprising the steps of a. electro-optically capturing and electronically processing a digital image of said sample, said digital image including representations of each of a plurality of the diverse elements of this sample, i. scanning the sample of cotton to develop a digital image of said sample, said digital image including representations of each of a plurality of the diverse elements of the sample, ii. identifying substantially each pixel of said digital image as lint pixel or non-lint pixel, iii. grouping adjacent non-lint pixels into individual ones of said diverse elements, iv. calculating at least one or more of the color, shape, texture, length/width ratio, and edge strength feature of each of said identified diverse elements, v. classifying each of said diverse elements as one of leaf, pepper trash, bark, grass or shadow based on the calculated features of each of said diverse elements, vi. calculating percent area and count per inch 2 for each class of diverse elements, b. providing a computer equipped with an artificial neural network, c. training said artificial neural network employing multiple samples of cotton which have been visually examined and assigned a grade by a human, said training including storing within said computer equipped with said artificial neural network, a digital image of each of said multiple samples and their respective grades which have been assigned thereto by the human, d. employing said computer and said trained artificial neural network, comparing said existence of, and one or more properties of the sample of cotton to the existence of, and one or more properties of, each of said multiple samples which have been visually examined and assigned a grade by a human and stored in said computer, e. outputting from said computer a numerical grade for said sample of cotton which is a function of the degree of similarity of said sample of cotton to a human graded one of said multiple samples stored in said computer.