The paper deals with the quantitative characterization of spreading morphologies of plasma sprayed Fe-based alloy droplets deposited on mirror polished steels with different preheated temperature. The plasma torch was utilized as heat producer. The influence of substrate temperature on the solidification mechanism of molten droplets was investigated. The image analysis method (IMA) was employed to identify single splat from the field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) morphology. The result shows that the substrate preheated temperature has a significant effect on the flattening behavior of molten droplets. With the increment of substrate temperature, the solidification mode of splat changes from flower-like and splashed splat to disk-like splat due to the modification of wettability and cooling velocity between molten droplet and substrate. Compared with area and perimeter, both fractal dimension (FD) and solidity could separately detect the solidification mode of splat to a certain extent, while the FD seems to be more excellent in characterizing irregular morphology of splat in contrast with solidity. However, the combination of FD and solidity is more efficient in classifying solidification mode of splat. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.