Rank-order functions for the fast detection of texture faults

Simple approaches to texture discrimination based on histogram analysis are useful in real-time applications but often yield inadequate results. On the other hand, methods based on higher-order statistics (e.g., co-occurrence matrices) provide a more complete statistical characterisation but are extremely time-consuming. In this paper, methods based on first order statistical analysis are reviewed and the significance of the relevant representative features analyzed. Then, rank functions are considered and appropriate distance functions are introduced that prove to have substantial advantages over classical histogram-based approaches.