Image analysis and computer vision for mineral froth

This paper presents a Windows based system for image analysis and computer vision of mineral froth. The system was designed for the ChaCo EC-project "The Characterization of Flotation Froth Structure and Color by Machine Vision", and developed on Microsoft Windows on PC computer. To make the system work efficiently both in laboratories and in the plants, we designed and developed a flexible Windows platform which mainly consists of image acquisition, image processing, froth (bubble) delineation, froth analysis and modeling, and interfaces between different computers in use. Hundreds of functions for froth analysis are included in the system, especially in the froth delineation part. A number of newly-developed algorithms can delineate bubbles with high accuracy and high speed, and in the froth analysis part, each bubble can be characterized by about 60 parameters that can also be used for constructing froth models directly in a Windows platform environment.

I. Introduction

The ChaCo project focuses on the use of image systems to analyse the form, shape and surface texture, and colour of froth in mineral processing. The research and development include three parts, namely: image grabbing, image processing and segmentation, and bubble parameter calculation.