Aggregate Sizing and Shape Determination Using Digital Image Processing

Aggregate size and shape measurements are increasingly becoming important issues in the mining, comminution, materials handling, and construction industries. Screening or sieving methods, today’s standard method of sizing stone materials, are simply too inefficient for some applications, excessively time consuming and costly for others, and do not provide enough data for yet other applications. Optical methods using digital image processing, while not ready to replace sieving entirely, promise to replace sieving in some niches, and promise to supplement sieving in others. Shape measurements are also becoming more important. These are however normally manual measurements, which are prohibitively tedious and subjective. Optical image processing methods also promise to replace these.