The fibre structure and orientation distribution of two commercially available glass mat thermoplastics reinforced by continuous glass fibre was studied to investigate the anisotropic behaviour under compression moulding and mechanical loading, and to investigate the influence of the fibre structure and orientation on the anisotropic behaviour. Circular samples were deformed into ellipses when moulded, due to the anisotropic fibre orientation. The fibre content and orientation were examined in different locations of the elliptically deformed specimens. X-ray pictures were taken of the material in order to develop images of the fibres, before and after compression moulding. In another procedure, the matrix was burned off and the fibre network structures were studied in each case. A CCD camera was used to scan the fibres as digital images to measure the orientation distribution functions of the fibres. The fibre orientation measuring process was facilitated by subroutines implemented in the source code of the public domain NIH-image analysis software using simulated Fraunhofer diffraction.