边缘检测、图像处理和最终数据提取

I'm new to this community, and to R, but not new to programming (C, VB, Matlab, APDL etc). I'm creating an engineering evaluation tool for a product, that needs to quantify the quality of the edge of a vane. I'll be evaluating hundreds of such vanes using an automated platform with a webcam in exactly the same place each time - thus will be performing statistical image analysis. I'm not new to statistics, but am completely new to R and digital image processing. (I selected R, since it's free, and I should be able to script in it. If there's a better way to do this, please let me know. Matlab is 2nd choice, because of the cost.)I'm new to this community, and to R, but not ne