2010 International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation

Leaf Area Measurement Based on Image Processing

Chaohui L, Hui Ren, Yibin Zhang, Yinhua Shen
School of Information Engineering
Communication University of China
Beijing, China
llvch@hotmail.com
In this paper, an efficient nondestructive measurement
method for live plant leaf area is proposed based on image
processing and analysis technique.

AbstractAn efficient measuring method for live plant leaf

area was proposed based on image processing technique.
Image geometric distortions were corrected firstly using
mapping function. For this, Hough transformation was
exploited to acquire the coordinates of quadrangle corner
points in distorted image. Then, image segmentation was
performed using threshold method. To eliminate the
influence of holes in the leaf, a new contour extraction
approach was presented. Pixel scanning from one side to
opposite side was implemented in four directions to extract
object contour. Next, contour region was filled. Finally, leaf
area was measured by pixel number statistic. Moreover,
other important parameter, leaf perimeter, can also be
obtained using our method. The proposed method was tested
with some live leaf images. Experimental results show our
method can measure the plant leaf area accurately.

II.

PROPOSED METHOD AND PRINCIPLE

The leaf area measuring system for field live plant leaf
consists three parts: digital CCD camera, PC and hand
normal panel. The normal panel is shown in Fig.1. Firstly,
a square with known side is drawn in a white paper. Then
the paper is fixed onto the hand board. When a leaf is
measured, it is put inside the square flatly. Finally, an
image including leaf and square is acquired using digital
CCD camera. Because the square area is known, pixel
numbers of square and leaf in the image can be calculated
using image processing technique, the leaf area can be
measured.

Keywords- live plant leaf; area measurement; image

processing; Hough transformation; contour extrction; region
filling

Leaf
Square

I.

INTRODUCTION

Background panel

Plant leaf is important apparatus for plant

photosynthesis and transpiration. Leaf area has large
influence on the product of crop, and is a key index in crop
growth and breeding practice. So how to measure plant
leaf area rapidly, accurately and nondestructive has very
important meaning to modern agriculture production. In
the past years, many measurement methods were already
proposed. They can be classified into: Square grid meter,
gravimetric methods, area-length regressions, planimeters
and image based approach [1]. The grid meter is timeconsuming and easily affected by human subjective
factor. The gravimetric method based on the weight of the
paper cut-out of the leaf tracing, compared to the weight
of known areas on the same paper, provides a
measurement of the area, it is a laborious technique when
applied to a large number of leaves. The area-length
regressions method firstly used one of the other methods
to calculate a coefficient. Then the leaf area is obtained
through measuring the length and width of the leaf. Its
measurement precision is low due to average principle.
The planimeter offers a less time-consuming technique,
but the precision is limited, especially for relatively small
leaves. Moreover, the planimeter has high price. In
recently years, methods involving image processing and
computer programs for analysis of these images have been
proposed. However, these methods mostly need cut the
leaf to measure, and can not complete measurement for an
individual plant.
978-0-7695-3962-1/10 $26.00 2010 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ICMTMA.2010.141

Figure 1. Hand normal panel

When a leaf area is measured in field condition, it is

difficult to keep cameras optical axis vertical with leaf
plane. So the plane of CCD is not superposition with
image plane, and the leaf image is distorted because of
some geometric distortions. This will affect the
measurement precision of leaf area. Therefore the
geometric distortion must be corrected before calculating
the leaf area. The proposed method is composed of four
steps. First, geometry correction is carried out. Then,
image segmentation is performed to acquire leaf region.
Next, leaf object contour is extracted and region is filled.
Finally, leaf area is calculated through pixel statistic.
III.

GEMOTRIC DISTORTION CORRECTION

In order to better restore the state of leaf, image

geometric distortions must be corrected. The mapping
function [2] between the distorted and corrected image is as
follows:

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 x = a0 + a1 x + a2 y + a3 xy

y = b0 + b1 x + b2 y + b3 xy

(1)

where ( x, y) and ( x, y ) denote the coordinates of

distorted and corrected image respectively. Mapping
relation is determined by eight coefficients. According to
the restricted condition of four corner points between input
square and output quadrangle, eight equations about eight
unknown coefficients are established. So the mapping
relation from corrected image to distorted image is
acquired.
For each pixel in corrected image, its
corresponding pixel can be found in distorted image. It is
noted that the mapping point in distorted image may not
the integer position. Therefore, bilinear interpolation
algorithm [3] is exploited to solve this problem. Fig.2 shows
the correction result.
1

(a) Original image

Figure 3. Image segmentation

Fig. 3 gives the image segmentation result. It can be

see that the threshold approach can segment the leaf image
successful.
B. Contour extrction
Plant diseases and insect pests will remove some area
from the leaf, or make the color of this special section
different from health leaf. This will leads to false
segmentation, and this section is often segmented as
background. Fig.4 shows an example of a leaf, which are
removed holes by insect. It is clear from Fig.4 (b) that the
part removed by insect is segmented into the background.
But this removed leaf part should also be included in leaf
area. Therefore, a contour extraction and region filling
technique is proposed.

2
(a) Distorted image

(b) Segmented image

(b) Corrected image

Figure 2. Image correction

In Fig. 2(a), the position of four corner points is

detected using Hough transformation. The coordinates in
distorted and corrected image are shown in Table I.
TABLE I.

FOUR CORNER COORDINATES

Image coordinates

Image

Point 1

Point 2

Point 3

Point 4

distorted

19,15

33,377

403,336

335,22

corrected

17,13

17,375

379,375

379,13

(a) Leaf with holes

Figure 4. Image segmentation

Eight coefficients for Fig.2 are calculated using data in

Table I.

Pixel scanning is performed to seek the contour point.

For the left contour of the object, pixel is scanned from left
to right and from bottom to top in the image. In each scan
line of the image, pixel is judged from left to right whether
it belongs to foreground object. When current pixel
belongs to object, this scan process is break and goes to
next scan line. Same rule is applied to every scan line.
Therefore, left side contour is extracted and each pixel in
the contour is marked.

a0 a1 a2 a3
b b b b =
0 1 2 3
2.8074 0.8291 0.0110 0.0004
2.2862 0.0350 1.1052 0.0003

IV.

(b) Segmented image

(2)

This process is performed on all other three directions

in turn: from top to bottom, right to left, and bottom to top.
In each contour extraction process, those marked pixel is
not scanned again. The region wrapped by the four
contours is decided as a final foreground region. In this
extraction process, the coordinates of every pixel in
contour is recorded for next step, region filling.

LEAF AREA MEASUREMENT

A. Image segmentation
Because scene is simple and color difference between
leaf and background panel is bigger, image segmentation is
implemented based on color threshold approach. The green
value is used as segmentation feature, and the threshold is
determined by using histogram.

Note that this approach is only effective for binary

image.
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C. Region filling
For a pixel in the contour, its coordinates was record in
above process. All pixels, which are scanned before this
contour pixel is encountered, are set as background. Pixels
that were not scanned in contour extraction process are set
as foreground object. So the contour region is filled.

TABLE II.

LEAF AREA MEASUREMENT REULTS

Data
Leaf

Pl (pixel
number)

Sl (cm2)

Ground
truth

Absolute
error

16643

31.2477

34.6509

3.4032

18263

33.5472

36.5834

3.0362

19458

34.6573

30.9847

3.6699

17894

32.8954

30.8732

2.0222

15328

30.1462

27.2656

2.8806

From Table II, it can be see that the error is relative

small and can meet the demand of practical application.
VI.
Figure 5. Object contour extraction

Figure 6. Region filling

In order to measure the live plant leaf area, image

processing technique was carried out in this paper. A hand
normal panel was used in image capturing process.
Geometric distortion was corrected through mapping
equation. For this, Hugh transformation was exploited to
detect the corner points of the quadrangle, and mapping
coefficients was calculated. Simple threshold approach
was performed to segment the leaf image. To eliminate the
influence of holes in leaf, pixel scanning was implemented
from one side to opposite side in four directions. So object
contour was acquired. Contour region was then filled.
Based on pixel number statistic, leaf area was measured.
Moreover, other important parameter, leaf perimeter, can
also be obtained using our method. The performance of the
presented method was tested using some live leaf images.
Experimental results show that the proposed method can
measure the leaf area accurately.

Object contour extraction for Fig.4 (b) is shown in

Fig.5. As expected, the contour of leaf object is acquired
and the contour line is smooth. Fig.6 shows the region
filling result. It can be see that the region is filled entirely.
It should be note that other important leaf parameter, leaf
perimeter, can be also obtained through counting the pixel
number in the contour. That is to count the number of pixel,
which gray value is 255 in extracted contour image.
Because pixel number of square side in corrected image
can be counted, and side is known, leaf perimeter is
calculated.
D. Leaf area calaculation
Leaf area is calculated through pixel number statistic.
Let Sl and Sf denote the area of leaf and square
respectively. Let Pl denote the pixel number of leaf object
in the image. Pf denote the pixel number within the square
in the image. So the leaf area calculation equation is as
follows:

Sl = S f

Pl
Pf

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the key project of Chinese
Ministry of Education (No. 108134), the Major project of
211 projects third period of Communication University
of China (No.21103040116) and the project of Asia Media
Research Centre, Communication University of China
(No.BG07008).

(3)

where Sf is known. Pl can be obtained through counting the

number of pixel with grey value 255 in filled image. Pf is
also acquired because the side of square in the corrected
image is known.
V.

CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES
[1]

EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

[2]

To illustrate the performance of the proposed

measurement approach, some live leafs were used. In our
experiments, leaf area measured by manual approach using
square grid meters is regarded as ground truth. Table II
lists five measuring results as examples.

[3]

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