Detection of overlapping plants using Active Shape Models

A novel method to detect small plants under overlapping situations was developed. This technique is based on detecting single leaves for further grouping into individual plants. The leaf detection is carried out by first detecting the ellipses that best superimpose the shape of a plant, considering that each leaf has to a certain degree an elliptical form. After detecting all possible leaves (ellipses) the next step is to group them into single plants by using an Active Shape Model (ASM) deformable template. Shape models of the experimental plants with 2, 3 and 4 leaves were created and tested separately and then together to analyze the ability of the method to overcome the overlapping problem. Results indicate that the proposed methodology is able to accurately identify small plants under different overlapping conditions.