Patch-based probabilistic identification of plant roots using convolutional neural networks

Abstract

Recently, computer vision and artificial intelligence are being used as enabling technologies for plant phenotyping studies, since they allow the analysis of large amounts of data gathered by the sensors. Plant phenotyping studies can be devoted to the evaluation of complex plant traits either on the aerial part of the plant as well as on the underground part, to extract meaningful information about the growth, development, tolerance, or resistance of the plant itself. All plant traits should be evaluated automatically and quantitatively measured in a non-destructive way. This paper describes a novel approach for identifying plant roots from images of the root system architecture using a convolutional neural network (CNN) that operates on small image patches calculating the probability that the center point of the patch is a root pixel. The underlying idea is that the CNN model should embed as much information as possible about the variability of the patches that can show chaotic and heterogeneous backgrounds. Results on a real dataset demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, as it overcomes the current state of the art.

Plant phenotyping relevance

CNNを用いて根系画像から根画素を確率的に識別する画像解析手法を開発しており、植物表現型の取得・抽出が研究の中心です。

Code and data availability

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