Evaluation of the Visual Texture and Aesthetic Appearance of Lace Patterns

Gray-scale image analysis is applied to the characterization of textural patterns of 29 kinds of lace. Five parameters extracted from the gray-level co-occurrence matrix and the fractal dimension determined from the fractal analysis of the relief of the curved surface of image gray level were measured as textural-feature parameters. Beauty, comfort, transparency, light sensation, and lacunarity of textural patterns of laces were evaluated by sensory evaluation according to the rating-scale method, and the relationship between their sensory-evaluation values and the textural-feature parameters is examined. Factor analysis shows beauty to be related to the entropy and fractal dimension; transparency and light sensation to the angular second moment, contrast, thickness, and weight; and lacunarity to the number of voids and mean void size. The beauty of textural patterns is discussed from the viewpoint of orderliness and complexity.