• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.26 no.10
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• pp.1445-1450
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• 2002

In the present study, a new pattern recognition algorithm was proposed to size spray particles using the boundary curvature information. Conceptually, this algorithm has an advantage over the others because it can identify the particle size and shape simultaneously, and also can separate the overlapped particles more effectively. Curvature of a boundary was obtained from the change of the slopes of two neighboring segments at the corresponding part. The algorithm developed in this study was tested by using an artificially prepared image of a group of spherical particles which were either isolated or overlapped. Particle sizes obtained from the measured curvatures agreed well with the true values. By detecting abrupt changes of the curvature along the image boundary, the element particles could be separated out from their overlapped images successfully.