Development of Shape Based Leaf Categorization

Leaves can be categorized based on various physical attributes but the most popular attribute is shape. For example, we can use „shape‟ as a criterion to differentiate between a mango leaf and a banana leaf. Ideally this criterion can be of immense help to the user of an image database that stores, for instance, the images of different kinds of leaves. The user would often wish to retrieve images of leaf similar to the one he/she has or categorize the leaf according to its kind. This retrieval is mostly based upon the shape of the image. We investigate shape analysis methods for retrieving images and we develop an approach for doing so. In our approach we first find out the corners of the leaf by “Harris corner detection” and then determine the convex hull by joining these “corner points”. The leaves are then distinguished by finding the difference between their internal angles at each control point. The same criterion is then used to retrieve images of leaves from a plant database that are identical to the one in the input image.