In order to solve the problems of the empirical spadework and time consuming when confirming the proportions of the colored fibers in the colored spun yarns,with the help of the video microscopy and image processing technology,a novel method based on a clustering algorithm is proposed to classify the color fibers and inspect the proportions of different color fibers. Firstly,the colored spun yarns are untwisted into the fibers,the colored fibers are arranged on the slide under the mild tension, and the corresponding images are captured by the video microscopy. Secondly,the gray projection method is adopted to localize the colored fibers,and the average value of R,G,B of all pixels in the center line of each colored fiber is extracted as a feature vector to characterize the colored fiber respectively. Finally, the feature vectors in RGB model are converted to the L* a* b* color model,a clustering algorithm by searching density peaks is applied into classifying the colored fibers and the proportions of each color fibers are calculated. Experiments results demonstrate that the proposed method can inspect the colors and proportions of colored fibers in the colored spun yarns with a satisfactory accuracy
