The Role of Image Enhancement in Citrus Canker Disease Detection

Digital image processing is employed in numerous areas of biology to identify and analyse problems. This approach aims to use image processing techniques for citrus canker disease detection through leaf inspection. Citrus canker is a severe bacterium-based citrus plant disease. The symptoms of citrus canker disease typically occur in the leaves, branches, fruits and thorns. The leaf images show the health status of the plant and facilitate the observation and detection of the disease level at an early stage. The leaf image analysis is an essential step for the detection of numerous plant diseases. The proposed approach consists of two stages to improve the clarity and quality of leaf images. The primary stage uses Recursively Separated Weighted Histogram Equalization (RSWHE), which improves the contrast level. The second stage removes the unwanted noise using a Median filter. This proposed approach uses these methods to improve the clarity of the images and implements these methods in lemon citrus canker disease detection. Keywords—Lemon tree; Citrus Canker; Recursively Separated Weighted Histogram Equalization; Median Filter; Image Enhancement; Disease detection