We present a method for an automated quality control of textile seams, which is aimed to establish a standardized quality measure and to lower coals in manufacturing. The system consists of a suitable image acquisition setup, an algorithm for locating the seam, a feature extraction stage and a neural network of the self-organizing map type for feature classification. A procedure to select an optimized feature set carrying the information relevant for classification is described. (C) 1999 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.