Abstract: A novel algorithm is presented in this paper to extract the features of foreign fibers in lint cotton within a complex background. The 2D wavelet transform is used to implement the edge detection based on the gray contrast between foreign fibers and cotton background, while the color features are extracted in CrCgCb color cube to solve the problem of luminance fluctuation. Morphological analysis is a critical procedure of the algorithm and the discontinuity of object features and operation time must be considered. Therefore, the proposed approach integrates a two-level connected component labeling algorithm and a morphological identification algorithm based on equivalent length-width ratio. Tests on five typical kinds of foreign fibers were implemented, and the results show that the identification rate of the above-mentioned algorithm is about 95%. The experimental results demonstrate that the feature extraction algorithm can identify foreign fibers effectively and can be used in real-time application.