Attention-enhanced UNet and gradient boosting decision tree for objective evaluation of fabric pilling grade based on image analysis

Fabric pilling can significantly affect the usability and appearance of fabrics; making the evaluation of pilling grades a crucial aspect of textile quality inspection. Currently, manual visual inspection is the mainstream strategy in the industry for assessing pilling, but this method suffers from low efficiency and inconsistent accuracy. Therefore, there is a need for a more precise and efficient method to evaluate textile pilling grades. In this paper, we propose an objective system for assessing fabric pilling grades using a deep learning model in conjunction with a gradient boosting decision tree classification algorithm. The system comprises a multi-light source fabric image acquisition setup, an Attention-enhanced UNet model, and a gradient boosting decision tree classifier. The process begins with capturing fabric images, which are then segmented using the Attention-enhanced UNet model. This model effectively extracts pilling features, including the number of pills, the pilling area, and the pilling coverage ratio. Our experimental results show that this segmentation method outperforms traditional filtering and edge detection algorithms in terms of efficiency. The attention mechanism integrated into the UNet model significantly enhances the segmentation performance, particularly for fabric pilling. By combining the extracted features as input for the fabric evaluation algorithm, our proposed method achieves an impressive classification accuracy of 98.47% in objectively evaluating fabric pilling grades. This approach offers a substantial improvement in both the accuracy and efficiency of fabric pilling grade assessment.