Segmentation of Winter Wheat Canopy Image Based on Visual Spectral and Random Forest Algorithm

Digital image analysis has been widely used in non-destructive monitoring of crop growth and nitrogen nutrition status due to its simplicity and efficiency. It is necessary to segment winter wheat plant from soil background for accessing canopy cover, intensity level of visible spectrum (R, G, and B) and other color indices derived from RGB. In present study, according to the variation in R, G, and B components of sRGB color space and L*, a*, and b* components of CIEL* a* b* color space between wheat plant and soil background, the segmentation of wheat plant from soil background were conducted by the Otsu's method based on a* component of CIEL* a* b* color space, and RGB based random forest method, and CIEL* a* b* based random forest method, respectively. Also the ability to segment wheat plant from soil background was evaluated with the value of segmentation accuracy. The results showed that all three methods had revealed good ability to segment wheat plant from soil background. The Otsu's method had lowest segmentation accuracy in comparison with the other two methods. There were only little difference in segmentation error between the two random forest methods. In conclusion, the random forest method had revealed its capacity to segment wheat plant from soil background with only the visual spectral information of canopy image without any color components combinations or any color space transformation.