Classification of plant leaf images with complicated background

Keywords: Image segmentation Plant leaf Complicated background Watershed segmentation Hu geometric moments Zernike moment Moving center hypersphere (MCH) classifier a b s t r a c t Classifying plant leaves has so far been an important and difficult task, especially for leaves with complicated background where some interferents and overlapping phenomena may exist. In this paper, an efficient classification framework for leaf images with complicated background is proposed. First, a so-called automatic marker-controlled watershed segmen-tation method combined with pre-segmentation and morphological operation is introduced to segment leaf images with complicated background based on the prior shape information. Then, seven Hu geometric moments and sixteen Zernike moments are extracted as shape features from segmented binary images after leafstalk removal. In addition , a moving center hypersphere (MCH) classifier which can efficiently compress feature data is designed to address obtained mass high-dimensional shape features. Finally, experimental results on some practical plant leaves show that proposed classification framework works well while classifying leaf images with complicated background. There are twenty classes of practical plant leaves successfully classified and the average correct classification rate is up to 92.6%. Plants play the most important part in the cycle of nature. They are the primary producers that sustain all other life forms including people. This is because plants are the only organisms that can convert light energy from the sun into food. Animals, incapable of making their own food, depend directly or indirectly on plants for their supply of food. Moreover, all of the oxygen available for living organisms comes from plants. Plants are also the primary habitat for thousands of other organisms. In addition, many of the fuel people use today, such as coal, natural gas and gasoline, were made from plants that lived millions of years ago. However, in recent years, people have been seriously destroying the natural environments, so that many plants constantly die and even die out every year. Conversely, the resulting ecological crisis has brought many serious consequences including land desertion, climate anomaly, land flood, and so on, which have menaced the survival of human being and the development of society. Now, people have realized the importance and urgency of protecting plant resource. Besides taking effective measures to protect plants, it is important for ordinary people to know or classify plants which can further enhance the public's consciousness of plant protection. Therefore, besides professional botanists, many non-professional researchers have paid more …