Patent ID: 6891961

Claim:
An animal carcass grading system for predicting quality and yield comprising: an image analysis computing system further comprising, an image input function operable to input an image from an image capturing system; a first adaptive color classification function operable to analyze the darkest and brightest areas in the image to establish Background and Fat start points and define an area therebetween to establish a Lean start point and operable to classify pixels as Background, Fat and Lean, respectively; a preliminary outside contour definition function operable to determine a gradient between background and non-background starting from image border coming inward to establish a preliminary outside contour based on the gradient; a first erode/dilate function operable to perform erosion and dilation of the preliminary outside contour forming a new outside contour; a center of gravity determining function operable to determine center of gravity of the new outside contour; an actual Lean color determination function operable to define a subarea about the center of gravity and calculate average Lean color in the subarea based on Lean classified pixels to determine an actual Lean color to establish an adaptive Lean start point; a second adaptive color classification function operable to classify areas as Background, Fat and Lean based on the actual Lean color; and a classification area function operable to calculate total area, total Lean area, total fat area and total unknown area based on second adaptive color classification.