Three methods were developed to better understand and characterize the near-field dynamic processes of rotary bell atomization. The methods were developed with the goal of possible integration into industry to identify equipment changes through changes in the primary atomization of the bell. The first technique utilized high-speed imaging to capture qualitative ligament breakup and, in combination with a developed image processing technique and PIV software, was able to gain statistical size and velocity information about both ligaments and droplets in the image data. A second technique, using an Nd:YAG laser with an optical filter, was used to capture size statistics at even higher rotational speeds than the first technique, and was utilized to find differences between serrated and unserrated bell ligament and droplet data. The final technique was incorporating proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) into image data of a side-profile view of a damaged and undamaged bell during operation. This was done to capture differences between the data sets to come up with a characterization for identifying if a bell is damaged or not for future industrial integration.