Despite the large production and consumption of textile fibers on a global basis, the ability to identify specific types of textile fibers with similar physical-chemical properties is a challenging obstacle for the textile industry. One problem in particular is the identification of specialty animal fibers. Cashmere is a specialty fiber that has a value of 7 to 8 times higher than its similar counterpart wool. It is important, therefore, for textile manufactures to be capable of distinguishing between bails of high value specialty fibers and those containing contamination from lower value products.

Today the universally accepted method of identifying fibers is microscopic analysis. However, the optical microscope is limited because of the subjective nature of the analysis and its limited ability to easily measure different parameters of the fiber such as the fiber diameter, the fiber scale length and the fiber scale thickness.