PUBLICATION IN REAL - TIME IMAGING AS OF 18 MARCH 1998 1 A Real - Time Algorithm for AssessingInhomogeneities in

| Cloudiness constitutes an important quality parameter of nonwoven fabrics. We show that it can be graded using a speciic Laplacian pyramid decomposition which has to be modiied at the boundaries. An algorithm is presented which calculates a quality measure as a weighted mean of the variances at all pyramid levels, where the weights are adapted to the human perception of cloudi-ness. The obtained results reach the quality of a human assessor. The method is easy to implement and it can be used for online grading of the complete fabric production of a plant.lication in Real-Time Imaging, the only deenitive respiratory of the content that has been certiied and accepted after peer review. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by Academic Press. This material may not be copied or reposted without explicit permission.