It is hard to inspect the state of lubrication of an automobile transmission visually. Thus, it is necessary to develop a new inspection method. Wear debris can be collected from the lubricants of an operating transmission of an automobile, and its morphology will be directly related to the friction condition of the interacting materials from which the wear debris originated in the lubricated transmission. In this study, wear debris in lubricating oil are extracted by membrane filter $(0.45{mu}m)$, and the quantitative values of shape parameters of wear debris are calculated by digital image processing. These shape parameters are studied and identified by an artificial neural network algorithm. The results of the study may be applicable to the prediction and diagnosis of the operating condition of transmission gear.