Abstract
The field is not always easy for plant phenotyping using conventional
phenotyping platforms due to the limited accessibility and regulated
aviation area. Smartphone-triggered ground images were collected on
wheat field that has a limited access to monitor growth conditions of
four wheat varieties, Shinyoung (SY), Joseong (JS), Taewoo (TW), and
Cheongwoo (CW). For field mapping during the growing season, six sets of
the raw RGB images were acquired by a smartphone camera in an oblique
view angle and processed to transform into nadir view images. A series
of algorithms were developed to process the skewed tile images to
straighten into the nadir images, align the deskewed images, and stitch
them into a field image by detecting crop rows using Hough
Transformation. Open-source software, iStitch, was developed to automate
the algorithms in a batch process. Plot-level metrics were extracted to
analyze plant growth of the wheat varieties using a gridding method for
vegetation and leaf area indexes. The processed images resulted in the
successful transformation and consistency of algorithms on image
alignment and stitching. Plot-level analysis indicated that SY variety
performed superior to the other varieties in plant quality and quantity
and significantly different from TW variety in canopy coverage. The
proposed approach of the stitching and gridding was applied on the
skewed images acquired by a smartphone camera but can be directly used
for other applications of plant phenotyping on images acquired by a
camera on a mobile platform or a grid of stationary cameras in
greenhouse or outdoor fields.