The crater topography patterns on multi-layer coated tools after turning for a series of machining times have been measured using Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy and Stylus Profilometry. These patterns have been collected to study the evolution of crater wear and explore a possibility of predicting the wear profile through the physics-based wear models. The raw crater patterns were processed using multi-resolution 1D and 2D wavelet analysis to eliminate the noise and spike/pits and then to decouple the large- and short-scale wear features. The wavelet method is proved to be a very powerful tool to filter noise/artifacts without losing the general crater pattern and to decouple roughness, waviness and form. Wavelet-decoupled roughness contained the scoring marks whose presence was monitored along the chip-flow direction and related to the preeminence between abrasion and dissolution based on the temperature distribution predicted by Finite Element Simulation. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.