Abstract: In order to measure the width of tobacco shreds rapidly and accurately, a device was designed based on the digital image processing technology of linear array CCD. The device was composed of a workpiece table, a lighting system, an imaging system, a control system and image processing algorithm software. In the process of measuring, several tobacco shreds were put in a test box, the movement of the test box was driven by the control system, the box was lightened by the high illuminance lighting system, the images of tobacco shreds were taken by a linear array CCD scanning camera, and finally the width of tobacco shred was determined via dissection, denoising, binarization and matrix turning. The results showed that the relative error of the device was less than 0.5% with the coefficient of variation less than 0.2%, it took only 1/6 of the time needed by a projector to measure the width of tobacco shred with the designed device. Meanwhile the width distribution of tobacco shred could be characterized. The measurement efficiency was effectively improved.