The aerosol morphologies of six types of particles plus one other from a different source were characterized quantitatively in terms of fractal dimensions based on boundary, projected area and surface roughness. Except for the particle with a smooth boundary, multifractal features were observed on the projected boundary of aerosols. It was found that the fractal dimensions of the aerosol boundaries in the high-resolution region ranged from 1.00 to 1.13, whereas those in the low-resolution region were distributed from 1.04 to 1.91. The compactness of a particle could be examined in terms of the fractal dimension of its projected area such that a solid particle gave a value of 2.00, a hollow particle with pores inside gave a value of 1.93 and a chain agglomerate gave an even lower value of 1.81. Aerosol topological features retrieved from the gray levels of a microimage were used to illustrate the difference in surface roughness or distinguish particle deposition on the substrate from that of agglomeration. A value of 2.49 was found for a hollow sphere in contrast to a value of 2.26 for a round pollen particle. Finally, a coordinate system was established by employing the computed fractal dimensions as axes to accommodate the particles characterized in this work and the Euclidean distance of a point from the origin was shown to be a potential composite index for aerosol morphology.
