Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 156 (2019) 307–311

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/compag

Original papers

Raw sugarcane classification in the presence of small solid impurity amounts T

using a simple and effective digital imaging system
⁎
Wesley Nascimento Guedesa, Fabíola Manhas Verbi Pereiraa,b,
a
Bioenergy Research Institute (IPBEN), Institute of Chemistry, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara, São Paulo 14800-060, Brazil
b
Department of Chemistry, Idaho State University, Pocatello, ID 83209, United States

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Specific amounts of solid impurities in raw sugarcane need to be detected before raw materials are carried into
Solid impurities mills. Solid impurities come from the plant, e.g., green and dry leaves and soil. This study proposed to classify
Sugarcane sugarcane via a new strategy using a well-established method that combines digital images converted into ten
Bioenergy color-scale color histograms of red (R), green (G) and blue (B), RGB; hue (H), saturation (S) and value (v), HSV;
Digital images
relative colors of RGB, rgb; and luminosity (L) with multivariate classification methods. Sampling was performed
Chemometrics
using a mixture design that comprised 122 different combinations of sugarcane stalks, vegetal plant parts and
soil to achieve 100 wt% for evaluating the desirable and undesirable situations for the solid impurity amounts.
Classical algorithms, such as soft independent modeling of class analogy (SIMCA), partial least squares dis-
criminant analysis (PLS-DA) and k nearest neighbors (kNN), were used to perform the calculations. Receive
operating characteristic (ROC) revealed the high sensitivity and specificity of the three algorithms using the
color histogram data. The outstanding result was the ability to classify sugarcane content higher than 85 wt%,
which is considered high-quality raw material by cane mills.

1. Introduction
The presence of the impurities that form during the sugarcane in-
dustrial process in refineries reduces the quality of the extracted juice
and adds undesirable substances, such as starch, to the sugar and
compromises ethanol production ((Eggleston et al., 2010, Thai and
Doherty, 2012, Cole et al. 2013, Bakir et al. 2016)). However, the
subject of this study is the solid impurities that commonly aggregate
before raw materials are carried into mills (Castro et al., 2014,
Everingham et al., 2016).
The solid impurity sources in sugarcane are vegetal parts from the
plant tops (green and dry leaves) and soil, which are inherent to the
harvesting process, i.e., harvesting green or burnt cane (Castro et al.
2014, Norris et al., 2015, Lisboa et al., 2018). For sugar and ethanol
production, the relevant and desired part of the sugarcane plant is the
stalk, which can be used for effective juice extraction via a roller mill
(Norris et al., 2015).
Solid impurities in raw sugarcane are a noteworthy subject, and
sugar and ethanol refineries need methods to evaluate impurities to
avoid low-quality final products and determine the appropriate use of
several chemicals to correct the production process. In one of our
previous studies (Andrade et al., 2017, Andrade et al., 2018), the che-
mical elements related to these solid impurities were detected using a
laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) system on leached solu-
tions immobilized in a polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) polymer substrate
(Andrade et al., 2017). The most important elements were Ca, Mg and
K.
In this study, a new method was used to detect high sugarcane stalk
contents by converting robust digital images into a numerical matrix
related to color histograms. The solid sample compositions included the
sugarcane stalks, vegetal parts of the plant and soil. A simple system
was developed to acquire the digital images. These images were con-
verted into ten color-scale descriptors: red (R), green (G) and blue (B),
i.e., the RGB system; hue (H), saturation (S) and value (V), i.e., the HSV
system; relative colors of RGB, i.e., rgb; and luminosity (L) (Santos et al.
2012, Camargo et al., 2018). The application of this method for an
agricultural and industrial issue in a novel manner results in a very
simple, effective and feasible method that can be used in cane refineries
to detect raw sugarcane in the presence of solid impurities. The ad-
vantages of this method are its high analytical frequency due to its
simplicity, fast image capture speed, lack of chemical use and low cost.
Another advantage is the portability of the devices used to capture the

⁎
Corresponding author at: Bioenergy Research Institute (IPBEN), Institute of Chemistry, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Araraquara, São Paulo 14800-060,
Brazil.
E-mail address: fabiola.verbi@unesp.br (F.M.V. Pereira).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2018.11.039
Received 24 July 2018; Received in revised form 15 October 2018; Accepted 26 November 2018
Available online 01 December 2018
0168-1699/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
W.N. Guedes, F.M.V. Pereira Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 156 (2019) 307–311

images, which allows for local analysis and easy coupling with in-line Black
systems. plastic
RGB image analysis is a fuel science method that has been used to box
measure the wax appearance temperature (Belati and Cajaiba, 2018). Digital
Researchers used a webcam sensor, and each image represented the camera
RGB patterns as an analytical response. At the beginning of crystal-
lization, the enhanced brightness promotes an increase in the RGB va-
lues. Good results were demonstrated, and the real-time analysis results Tripod
40 cm
agreed with the calorimetric measurements.
In this study, we propose a powerful method that can be applied by
using an available and easy-to-use computational tool to convert images
into color scales. The sugarcane content assessment was performed
using multivariate classification models (Lavine and Rayens, 2009)
with the aim of creating an analytical method to measure the quality of Sample
raw materials before introducing them into the industrial stream at
sugarcane mills.
Paper
tray
2. Materials and methods

2.1. Samples
Sugarcane stalks, vegetal plant parts and soil were collected at a
crop field located in Ibaté, São Paulo State, Brazil. A washing procedure
was not performed on this material to detect the levels of solid im-
purities before the raw material to be introduced into an industrial
stream. The compositions of the samples were outlined by a mixture
design comprising 122 different combinations of sugarcane stalk (SC,
desired material), vegetal plant parts, i.e., green and dry leaves (vegetal
impurities, VI), and soil (S) to cover the desirable and undesirable si-
tuations for the solid impurity amounts, as shown in Fig. 1. The number
of samples in the range between 90 and 100 wt% SC was increased by
24 samples for a total of 146 samples. The components of each sample
were separately weighed and combined to achieve 100 wt%. The
samples were divided in the following manner: range 1 (SC from 85 to
100 wt%) with 46 samples, range 2 (SC from 66 to 83 wt%) with 51
samples and range 3 (from 41 to 65 wt%) with 49 samples, as shown in
Table 1S in the Supplementary material. Range 1 presents the ideal
composition for a sugarcane refinery.
2.2. Image acquisition setup
Each solid mixture was placed in a paper tray (26.5 cm × 21.5 cm)
inside a black box for image acquisition using a digital camera Nikon
(COOLPIX S3500, Tokyo, Japan) with 20.1-megapixel resolution, as
shown in Fig. 2. The black box was chosen to avoid possible absorption
Fig. 2. Setup for image acquisition using a box and digital camera on a tripod.
In the paper tray is one of the solid mixture samples. The distance between the
camera and the tray sample is 40 cm.
or reflection of light from the environment. The images were recorded
with the tray in a horizontal position with a 1600 × 1200 pixel size
(width × height) and 300 × 300 dpi (dots per inch) resolution. The
image acquisition setup was configured to mimic real conditions at
sugarcane mills. The focal distance of the camera was 10 mm with a
maximum aperture of 3.5, and the region of interest (ROI) corre-
sponded to 100% of the original image, as shown in Fig. 2. During the
acquisition of the images, the camera software automatic adjustments
were intentionally disabled. Five images were recorded per sample for a
total of 730 images; the samples were shaken after each image re-
cording.
2.3. Data analysis
The first step is to read the image using the function ‘imread’ in
Matlab R2015b (The MathWorks, Natick, MA, USA). Afterwards, the
original images were converted into color histograms using the function
‘imhist’ in Matlab and the averaged color values, which were comprised
of ten color-scale descriptors: R (red), G (green), B (blue), their relative
colors (r, g and b), H (hue), S (saturation), V (value) and L (luminosity),
using a laboratory-made Matlab code available in the reference

0 Fig. 1. Diagram of the mixture design out-

0 15 lined for sugarcane stalk (SC), vegetal im-
100
2 purity (VI) and soil (S) contents in samples.
The orange diamonds represent samples
4
with a range between 85 and 100 wt% SC;
25 10 the gray squares represent the range from 66
75 6
VI

to 83 wt% SC; and the gray circles represent

%)

(w

8 the range from 41 to 65 wt% SC. The en-

wt

t%
)

VI
%

S(

larged diagram is the target range of this

)
wt

(w

50 10 study. (For interpretation of the references

S(

t%

50 5 to color in this figure legend, the reader is

)

12 referred to the web version of this article.)

14
75
25
0
85 90 95 100
SC (wt%)
100
0
0 25 50 75 100
SC (wt%)

308
W.N. Guedes, F.M.V. Pereira Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 156 (2019) 307–311

2
6 85 wt% (SC), 5 wt% (VI) and 10 wt% (S) 4x10
85 wt% (SC), 5 wt% (VI) and 10 wt% (S)
2x10 A E
6
1x10
2
2x10
5
1x10
0
0 2
85 wt% (SC), 10 wt% (VI) and 5 wt% (S) 4x10
6 85 wt% (SC), 10 wt% (VI) and 5 wt% (S)
2x10 B F
6
1x10
2
2x10
5
1x10
0
Counts

Counts
0 2
85 wt% (SC) and 15 wt% (S) 4x10
6 85 wt% (SC) and 15 wt% (S)
2x10 C G
6
1x10
2
2x10
5
1x10
0
0 2
4x10
6 85 wt% (SC) and 15 wt% (VI) 85 wt% (SC) and 15 wt% (VI)
2x10
6
D H
1x10 2
2x10
5
1x10
0
0
0 256 512 768 1024 1280 1536 1792 2048 2304 2560 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Color scale Averaged color values

Fig. 3. Profiles of the color histograms for samples with 85 wt% SC and different amounts of impurities: (a) 5 wt% vegetal impurity (VI) and 10 wt% soil (S), (b) 10 wt
% VI and 5 wt% S, (c) 15 wt% S and (d) 15 wt% VI; the colors are represented by 1–256 for red (R), 257–512 for green (G), 513–768 for blue (B), 769–1024 hue (H),
1025–1280 saturation (S), 1281–1536 intensity (I) (or value), 1537–1792 relative red (r), 1793–2048 relative green (g), 2049–2304 relative blue (b), and 2305–2560
luminosity (L). Averaged color values for the same samples (e) - (h); the numbers from 1 to 10 are averaged values for R, G, B, H, S, V, r, g, b and L. The images
correspond to the sample composition of the plots. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)

6x10
5
0.4 r
85-100 66-83 41-65 training set b
85-100 66-83 41-65 validation set
A g B
Loading values for PC1

5
3x10

0.2
H S
PC2 (25%)

-3x10
5
0.0

5
-6x10

5
-0.2
-8x10
-4x10
5
0 7x10
5
1x10
6
0 256 512 768 1024 1280 1536 1792 2048 2304 2560
PC1 (45%) Colors scale

Fig. 4. Plots from the PCA for (a) scores representing the three ranges of SC in wt% for the training (orange diamonds) and validation (white diamonds) data sets and
(b) loading values for PC1 with 45% explained variance calculated for the color histogram data. (For interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the
reader is referred to the web version of this article.)

(Camargo et al., 2018). Then, two data matrices were generated, one response corresponds to the average of the color interval, e.g., for R
for the color histograms and the other for the averaged color values, color, the average of values from 1 to 256 (Fig. 3A, Fig. 3B, Fig. 3C and
and separately evaluated (Fig. 3). Fig. 3D). For the calculations, the independent variables of the color
For the matrices, each sample was represented by an average of five histograms were mean-centered, and the averaged color values were
data images. Then, the data matrices were organized as follows: (1) 146 auto-scaled. The different preprocessing methods are related to the
rows × 2560 columns for the ten color histograms (256 value in- nature of the data; i.e., the color histograms have zero values, and the
tensities for each color) and (2) 146 rows × 10 columns for the aver- averaged color values have wide variations in magnitude and no zero
aged values of the 10 colors. The rows comprised the samples, and the values, as shown in Fig. 3.
columns were the colors. The response (independent variables) is the The two types of preprocessing, mean-centered and auto-scaled,
frequency at which each color is repeated and is represented by the ensure the mean of the independent variables equals zero, but the auto-
counts in the color histograms; in the case of the averaged colors, each scaled data have a standard deviation equal to one.

309
W.N. Guedes, F.M.V. Pereira Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 156 (2019) 307–311

1.0 1.0

A A
Sensitivity

Sensitivity
0.5 0.5

0.0 0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.0
1-Specificity 1-Specificity
1.0 1.0

B B
Sensitivity

Sensitivity
0.5 0.5

0.0 0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 0.0 0.5 1.0
1-Specificity 1-Specificity
1.0
1.0

C C
Sensitivity

Sensitivity

0.5
0.5

0.0
0.0 0.5 1.0 0.0
1-Specificity 0.0 0.5 1.0
1-Specificity
Fig. 5. ROC curves (orange) for the training set of the color histogram data
Fig. 6. ROC curves (orange) for the validation set of the color histogram data
calculated using (a) SIMCA, (b) PLS-DA and (c) kNN representing the area
calculated using (a) SIMCA, (b) PLS-DA and (c) kNN representing the area
under the curve. The black dashed-dotted line is the reference line for the 0, 0.5
under the curve. The black dashed-dotted line is the reference line for the 0, 0.5
and 1.0 values of sensitivity and specificity. (For interpretation of the references
and 1.0 values of sensitivity and specificity. (For interpretation of the references
to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the web version of this
article.)
article.)

The chemometric tools used, i.e., soft independent modeling of class

3. Results and discussion
analogy (SIMCA), PLS for discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) and k nearest
neighbor (kNN), are available on Pirouette 4.5 rev. 1 software
The mixture design outlined for this study furnished a good as-
(Infometrix, Bothell, WA, USA). A well-established Kennard and Stone’s
sessment of the range from 41 to 100 wt% for sugarcane stalks with
algorithm (Kennard and Stone, 1969) was applied to select 20% of the
different amounts of added impurities. Fig. 1 shows the distribution of
samples for the validation set. The performance of the classification
the sample compositions, and the enlarged diagram is the target range
models was measured using the receive operating characteristic (ROC)
from 85 to 100 wt%, which represents high-quality raw sugarcane. In
curve that provides the general discriminating power of a parameter for
general, when a cane refinery receives raw material, the solid impurity
identifying positive and negative events, and the ideal decision is an
amounts are unpredictable and impossible to visualize by the naked eye
area equal to 1 (Brown and Davis, 2006).
because tons of material are shipped hourly. A real example is shown in
the images in Fig. 3, and the colors of the raw sugarcane and solid
impurities are very similar. Three ranges were created. The desirable

310
W.N. Guedes, F.M.V. Pereira
stalk content value (85–100 wt%) is denoted as range 1, and the other
two ranges have a balanced number of samples.
The image system was built based on our previous experience with
methods involving digital images and chemometric tools (Camargo
et al. 2018, Pereira et al., 2011). The general concept is to employ a
simple, easy-to-use system that can be configured and used in any lo-
cation. Note that the resolution of the image was not high (300 × 300
dpi), which allows the use of other simple devices, such as a cellphone
or webcam, instead of a digital camera. The images were captured in a
manner (Fig. 2) that did not require the use of sophisticate software to
crop or select the useful image area for conversion into a color histo-
gram.
Fig. 3 shows the information from the images after their conversion
into color histograms (Fig. 3A–D) and the averaged color values
(Fig. 3E–H). The preliminary evaluation reveals that the highest color
variations occur for 769–1024 (H) and 1025–1280 (S) and the relative
colors 1537–1792 (r), 1793–2048 (g) and 2049–2304 (b). The averaged
color values show slight variations. To better evaluate the data, a
principal component analysis (PCA) was separately performed on both
matrices. The color histogram data in Fig. 4 show the information re-
lated to the ranges. Range 1 (SC from 85 to 100 wt%) was not clustered
with the other ranges, as shown in Figs. 4A. B shows that the cluster
variables with the highest influence were H, S, r, g and b due to their
high loading values. The same analysis was performed on the averaged
color values, and the samples in range 1 overlapped with the samples in
range 2 from 66 to 83 wt% (Fig. 1SA in Supplementary material). The
variables H, S, r, g and b do not have the same influence on the aver-
aged color values. The loading values for H, S, V, r, g and b for the PC1
and PC2 visualization were near zero (Fig. 1SB, Supplementary mate-
rial). Thus, these variables have not a large influence on the dis-
crimination of raw sugarcane with small impurity amounts for the
averaged color values. A variable selection was performed, but no im-
provements were verified for either data set, which confirmed that the
entire color histogram profile provides complete information for sample
clustering.
The averaged color value data did not show good specificity and
sensitivity values for range 1. However, a small dataset with 10 vari-
ables was tested and compared with the color histogram data con-
taining 2560 variables. ROC curves for the data training set are shown
in Fig. 2SA, 2SB and 2SC in the Supplementary material. The areas were
0.55, 0.63 and 0.88 for the SIMCA, PLS-DA and kNN model training
sets, respectively, and the areas were 0.44, 0.38 and 0.69 for the vali-
dation set, as shown in Fig. 3SA, 3SB and 3SC, respectively, in the
Supplementary material. These values were not sufficiently accurate to
propose a classification model since a consensus among the values was
not achieved.
The color histograms showed more potential, and the parameters
selected for the models are described as follows. SIMCA required 3
principal components (PCs) for each class with an explained variance
from 85 to 91%. After selecting the 3 PCs, the monotonic variation was
verified, and no improvement was shown for the models. For PLS-DA, 6
latent variables (LVs) resulted in 91% of the explained variance for each
class and standard error of cross-validation (SECV) values of 0.2 for
range 1 and 0.3 for ranges 2 and 3. The SECV using 6 LVs showed the
best predictive ability of the model. For kNN, 1 neighbor was selected
for the votes. In this case, 1, 2, 3 or 4 nearest neighbors (NN) showed
the same number for misclassifications. To verify the performance of
the models, ROC curves were also applied for the SIMCA (Fig. 5A), PLS-
DA (Fig. 5B) and kNN (Fig. 5C) models for samples in range 1 with a
high sugarcane content from 85 to 100 wt%. According to these results,
SIMCA and kNN showed maximum area values equal to 1 for either
quality parameter, i.e., sensitivity and specificity, and PLS-DA achieved
a value of 0.97. The black dashed-dotted line is the reference for values
0, 0.5 and 1 in the plots of Fig. 5. Afterwards, the validation samples
were used to evaluate the predictability of the models. The area results
for the validation samples are shown in Fig. 6A–C and were 0.81, 0.81
311
Computers and Electronics in Agriculture 156 (2019) 307–311
and 0.92 for SIMCA, PLS-DA and kNN, respectively. These values were
accurate and confirmed the PC, LV and NN selections did not overfit the
data. The noteworthy result is that misclassifications occurred between
ranges 2 and 3 but did not occur for the samples in range 1 (the desired
range). In other words, in the model results, any sample in range 1 was
misclassified as a member of range 2 or 3. For PLS-DA, the samples
were not classified as members of any range. In addition, the three
classifiers showed similar performances for both the training and vali-
dation sets.
4. Conclusions
An exploratory analysis using PCA for the color histograms revealed
the tendency of samples with 15 wt% impurities to cluster. The image
method combined with three different multivariate models can classify
raw sugarcane content above 85 wt% in the presence of different solid
impurity amounts. The ROC curves confirmed sensitivity and specificity
areas above 0.97 for the models using the color histogram data.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful to the São Paulo Research Foundation
(FAPESP, 2016/00779-6 and 2017/05550-0) and the Coordination for
the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES, W.N.G. grant
fellowship).
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://
doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2018.11.039.
References
Eggleston, G., Grisham, M., Antoine, A., 2010. Clarification properties of trash and stalk
tissues from sugar cane. J. Agric. Food Chem. 58, 366–373.
Thai, C.C.D., Doherty, W.O.S., 2012. Characterisation of sugarcane juice particles that
influence the clarification process. Int. Sugar J. 114, 719–724.
Cole, M., Eggleston, G., Gilbert, A., Rose, I., Andrzejewski, B., St Cyr, E., Stewart, D.,
2013. The presence and implication of soluble, swollen, and insoluble starch at the
sugarcane factory and refinery. Int. Sugar J. 115, 844–851.
Bakir, H., Zhang, Z., Zbik, M.S., Harrison, M.D., Doherty, W.O.S., 2016. Understanding
flocculation properties of soil impurities present in the factory sugarcane supply. J.
Food Eng. 189, 55–63.
Castro, S.G.Q., Franco, H.C.J., Mutton, M.A., 2014. Harvest managements and cultural
practices in sugarcane. Rev. Bras. Ci. Solo 38, 299–306.
Everingham, Y., Sexton, J., Skocaj, D., Inman-Bamber, G., 2016. Accurate prediction of
sugarcane yield using a random forest algorithm. Agron. Sustain Dev. 36, 27.
Norris, C.P., Norris, S.C., Landers, G.P., 2015. A new paradigm for enhanced industry
profitability: Post-harvest cane cleaning. Int. Sugar J. 117, 222–428.
Lisboa, I.P., Cherubin, M.R., Lima, R.P., Cerri, C.C., Satiro, L.S., Wienhold, B.J., Schmer,
M.R., Jin, V.L., Cerri, C.E.P., 2018. Sugarcane straw removal effects on plant growth
and stalk yield. Ind. Crops Prod. 111, 794–806.
Andrade, D.F., Sperança, M.A., Pereira-Filho, E.R., 2017. Different sample preparation
methods for the analysis of suspension fertilizers combining LIBS and liquid-to-solid
matrix conversion: determination of essential and toxic elements. Anal. Methods 9,
5156–5164.
Andrade, D.F., Guedes, W.N., Pereira, F.M.V., 2018. Detection of chemical elements re-
lated to impurities leached from raw sugarcane: use of laser-induced breakdown
spectroscopy (LIBS) and chemometrics. Microchem. J. 137, 443–448.
Santos, P.M., Wentzell, P.D., Pereira-Filho, E.R., 2012. Scanner digital images combined
with color parameters: a case study to detect adulterations in liquid cow’s milk. Food
Anal. Methods 5, 89–95.
Camargo, V.R., Santos, L.J., Pereira, F.M.V., 2018. A proof of concept study for the
parameters of corn grains using digital images and a multivariate regression model.
Food Anal. Methods 11, 1852–1856.
Belati, A., Cajaiba, J., 2018. Measurement of wax appearance temperature using RGB
image analysis and FBRM. Fuel 220, 264–269.
Lavine, B.K., Rayens, W.S., 2009. Classification: basic concepts. In: Brown, S.D., Tauler,
R., Walczak, B. (Eds.), Comprehensive chemometrics: chemical and biochemical data
analysis. Elsevier: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, vol. 3, pp. 507–515 (Chapter 3.15).
Kennard, R., Stone, L.A., 1969. Computer aided design of experiments. Technometrics 11,
137–148.
Brown, C.D., Davis, H.T., 2006. Receiver operating characteristics curves and related
decision measures: a tutorial. Chemom. Intell. Lab. Syst. 80, 24–38.
Pereira, F.M.V., Milori, D.M.B.P., Pereira-Filho, E.R., Venâncio, A.L., Russo, M.S.T.,
Cardinali, M.C.B., Martins, P.K., Freitas-Astúa, J., 2011. Laser-induced fluorescence
imaging method to monitor citrus greening disease. Comput. Electron. Agric. 79,
90–93.