Identifying plant species using architectural features in leaf microscopy images

Joao Batista Florindo and Odemir Martinez Bruno and Davi Rodrigo Rossatto and Rosana Marta Kolb and Maria Cecilia Gomez and Gabriel Landini

BOTANY, 94(1):15-21, 2016

This work proposes an analytical method to identify plant species based on microscopy images of the midrib cross-section of leaves. Unlike previous shape-based approaches based on the individual shape of external contours and cells, an architectural analysis is proposed, where the midrib is semi-automatically segmented and partitioned into histologically relevant structures composed of layers of cells and vascular structures. Using a sequence of morphological operations, a set of geometrical measures from the cells in each layer is extracted to produce a vector of features for species categorization. The method applied to a database containing 10 species of plants from the Brazilian flora achieved a success rate of 91.7%, outperforming other classical shape-based approaches published in the literature.