Image-based Water Level Measurement Method under Stained Ruler

This paper proposes the water level measuring method based on the image,while the ruler used to indicate the water level is stained.The contamination of the ruler weakens or eliminates many features which are required for the image processing.However,the feature of the color difference between the ruler and the water surface are firmer on the environmental change compare to the other features.As the color differences are embossed,only the region of the ruler is limited to eliminate the noise,and the average image is produced by using several continuous frames.A histogram is then produced based on the height axis of the produced intensity average image.Local peaks and local valleys are detected,and the section between the peak and valley which have the greatest change is looked for.The valley point at this very moment is used to detect the water level.The detected water level is then converted to the actual water level by using the mapping table.The proposed method is compared to the ultrasonic based method to evaluate its accuracy and efficiency on the various contaminated environments.