Cucumber3DGaussians: Plant architecture analysis using semantic-aware Gaussian splatting

Abstract

Monitoring continuous agricultural canopies is fundamentally limited by the geometric constraints and computational bottlenecks of traditional 3D reconstruction. This study presents a 3D volumetric phenotyping pipeline integrating semantic mask generation with 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) to quantify greenhouse cucumber canopy architecture. To drive component-specific optimization, we evaluated custom-trained convolutional networks (YOLO11) against a zero-shot foundation model (SAM3), determining that SAM3 provided the necessary boundary precision for accurate spatial isolation. The optimized 3DGS model outperformed implicit NeRF baselines, preserving fine-scale morphological details at real-time rendering speeds ( ≈ 48 FPS). To enable actionable measurement, a uniform voxelization protocol was applied to the point cloud, successfully neutralizing algorithmic densification bias. This technical framework yielded highly accurate physical geometry, achieving a Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) of ≤ 0.59 cm against in situ leaf measurements. Transitioning to agronomic interpretation, the pipeline was deployed to quantify complex canopy architecture. It mathematically mapped structural congestion zones and provided a temporal validation of a standard pruning intervention, explicitly capturing the geometric increase in lower-canopy porosity and the upward translation of biomass. This framework provides a robust, scale-accurate tool for monitoring plant architecture and guiding dynamic canopy management.

Plant phenotyping relevance

植物キャノピーの3D形状を取得・定量化する画像ベースの表現型解析パイプラインを開発し、実測葉寸法で精度検証しているため、方法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The supplied blocks describe a cucumber canopy 3DGS phenotyping pipeline (greenhouse RGB video datasets, YOLO11/SAM3 masks, splatfacto reconstruction, voxelized trait extraction), but contain no public dataset deposit, no author analysis code repository, no trained model/checkpoint release, and no data availability or

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