Internal fibrillation of pulp fiber is an important factor affecting paper properties. Internal fibrillation of pulp fiber is usually introduced with several kinds of modifications of fiber by the mechanical treatment such as refining, high shear and/or high consistency mixing, etc. Unfortunately there are no standardized methods that can characterize the extent of internal fibrillation and its contribution on the paper properties. The purpose of this study is to try and find the potential methods that can characterize the internal fibrillation of pulp fiber quantitatively. Softwood bleached kraft pulp was treated with Hobart mixer to introduce the internal fibrillation without the significant fiber damage and external fibrillation. The extent of internal fibrillation was increased with the increase of mechanical treatment consistency. Several fiber properties were measured to find the potential means that could characterize and quantity the internal fibrillation. Laminated area could not be used as a means for quantifying the internal fibrillation because of the effect of swelling and the different internal fibrillation behavior at different mechanical treatment consistency. Micro and macro internal fibrillation models were proposed for describing the different behavior for the mechanical treatment at low and high consistencies of pulp. The Internal fibrillation showed good correlation with swelling of fiber wall. This trend was confirmed through the measurement of wall thickness and/or cross section area of fiber. Therefore the internal fibrillation possibly can be described as the indices indicating the change of wall thickness and/or cross section area.