Recognizing overlapped particles during a crystallization process from in situ video images for measuring their size distributions

This paper presents a method to recognize polygonal-shaped particles (i.e. rectangles, regular/irregular prisms) among agglomerated crystals from in-situ images during a crystallization process. The aim is to measure the particle size distributions (PSD); a key measurement needed for monitoring and controlling industrial crystallization operations . The method is first based on detecting the geometric features of the particles identified by their salient corners. A clustering technique is then applied by grouping three correspondent salient corners belonging to the same polygon. The efficiency of the method is tested on particles of Ammonium Oxalate (AO) monitored during batch crystallization in pure water. Particle size distributions are calculated, and a quantitative comparison between automatic and manual sizing is performed.