2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering

Grading Method of Leaf Spot Disease Based on Image Processing

Shen Weizheng1 Wu Yachun1 Chen zhanliang2 Wei Hongda3

1Department of computing, Engineering College, Northeast Agricultural University,
Harbin150030, China E-MAIL: alienmars@163.com
2Department of agricultural electrization and automatization, Engineering College,
Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin150030, China
3Anmin countryside, Zhaodong151103, China

Abstract research, such as agricultural products quality

inspection and classification, the crop growth state
Since current grading of plant diseases is mainly monitoring, plant disease and insect pests
based on eyeballing, a new method is developed identification, and other agricultural robot[8,9]. With
based on computer image processing. All influencing the rapid development of computer hardware and
factors existed in the process of image segmentation software technology, the application of image
was analyzed and leaf region was segmented by using processing technology in the agricultural research has
Otsu method. In the HSI color system, H component made significant development.
was chosen to segment disease spot to reduce the
disturbance of illumination changes and the vein. 1 Classification Principle
Then disease spot regions were segmented by using
Sobel operator to examine disease spot edges. Finally The severity extent of the plant leaves diseases is
plant diseases are graded by calculating the quotient commonly measured by the ratio of lesion area and
of disease spot and leaf areas. Researches indicate leaf area ratio. Adopting image processing method to
that this method to grade plant leaf spot diseases is measure can be expressed as the following formula
fast and accurate.
p 1 1
Key words: Image segmentation; Disease
grading; Computer application
Ad ( x , y ) R d ( x , y ) R d
t= = =
0 Introduction Al p 1 1
( x , y ) Rl ( x , y ) Rl
Plant diseases can cause significant reduction in
rops and lead to poor quality of agricultural
Ad Lesion Region Area;
products[1], thus influence economy and people's life. Al Leaf Region Area;
The mensuration of the extent plant disease is the
essential item in the research of disease control, yield
p Unit Pixel Expressed Area;
loss estimate, disease resistance and breeding, as well Rd Lesion Region;
as disease catch mechanism[1-7]. Although there is an
industrial recognized corresponding standard to grade
Rl Leaf Region.
the leaf spot disease[4-7], the naked eye observation Unit pixel in the same digital image represente the
method is mainly adopted in the production practice. same size, so ratio t can be obtained by segmenting
Because of the difference of personal knowledge and lesions and leaves and calculating pixel
practical experience, the same samples are classified
into different grades by different experts. Therefore,
number 1 of lesion region and ( ) 1 of leaves
( x, y )Rd x, y Rl
the result is usually subjective and it is impossible to
region in the binary image. Then according to disease
measure the disease extent precisely. Although grid
classification standard consult table the final severity
paper method can be used to improve the accuracy, it
level can be achieved.
is seldom used in practice due to cumbersome
operation process and time-consuming. Therefore
looking for a fast and accurate method to measure 2 Image Acquisition
plant disease severity is of great realistic significance.
Since the late 1970s, computer image processing This study takes gray leaf spot disease of soybean
technology is applied in the agricultural engineering as example for illustrating the plant disease extent
grading method. Infected leaves are placed flat on a

978-0-7695-3336-0/08 $25.00 2008 IEEE 491

DOI 10.1109/CSSE.2008.1649
white background. The optical axis of digital camera
is perpendicular to the leaf plane to shoot images,
which are deposited in the computer for future use.
3 Image Segmentation
Image segmentation is not only the basic
technology of image processing and prophase vision,
but also the important component of most image
analysis and visual system[10]. Image segmentation is
to separate the different regions with special
significance in the image. These regions do not
intersect each other, and each region should meet
consistency conditions in specific regions[11]. In this
study two-step division is implemented to obtain the
leaves and lesion areas.
3.1 Leaf regional segmentation
In order to reduce computation by obtaining
region and leaf image and narrowing the regions of
interest , the background should be removed firstly.
The formula of graying the collected RGB color
image [12] is:
I = 0.3R + 0.59G + 0.11B
Image gray statistical histogram basically shows
bimodal characteristics. The left wave crest
Gray Image Gray Histogram
Fig.1 Segmentation of leaf region
3.2 Lesion Segmentation
The accurate segmentation of lesion region
determines the success or failure of the experiment.
The following aspects influence the experimental
process:
1) Illumination Change
In light of in this study the image can be collected
isolated or alive and it is very difficult to control light
in the process of wild living collection, the natural
light is usually adopted. Therefore imaging quality is
influenced by light changes.
2) Influence of Vein
The vein color is usually shallower than the leaf
color and in the early stages of illness the green color
often fade. Therefore in the course of lesion
segmentation, the phenomenon of the wrong
segmentation often exist.
3) Instable Lesion Characteristics
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correspond to the leaf region with lower gray value.
Due to the uneven illumination when collecting
pictures in the field, there are a few splits between the
bachground region and its corresponding wave crest.
While the gray value between leaves and background
vary greatly (distance between wave crest>100),
threshold segmentation is not impacted. Otsu is used
to segment images[13,14], which is an overall
automatic threshold selection mothod imposed by the
Japanese scholarDa Jin. Otsu is derived from the
least binary multiplication principle, which basic idea
is if an image is formed by an object and background
with different gray values, some gray value is
adopted as threshold to segment the image into two
groups--the ogject and background and calculate the
variance between the two groups. When the largest
variance is achieved, this gray value is used as
threshold for image segmentation. After image
segmentation, the binary image contained leaf
region Rl is obtained by region filling and eliminating
holes in the white region. After scanning the image
from top to bottom and from left to right, the number
of pixel in the white non-zero region 1
( x, y )Rl
is
247784.
Binary Image of Leaf Region
In different stages of the disease, under the
influence of light, water, nutrition, and so on, the
lesion manifest various symptoms, which brings
difficulties to the segmentation.
Based on the above factors, the image is
transformed from RGB color space to HSI color
space[15], which is more suitable for visual
characteristics of human beings. Since the brightness
component is independent of the color component
and the vision of human beings is more sensitive to
hue compared to saturation, the color component can
be good to eliminate glare, shadows and other light
factors during color image segmentation. And the
similar gray value of the shallow color vein and the
leaf in color component can decrease the interference
of the vein in the follow-up lesion image
segmentation to a large extent. Although the lesion
characteristics are varied, the boundaries between the
lesion and the healthy part are obvious and the color
of the lesion change frequently. Hence its
corresponding gray gradient changes will be so
dramatic that it can be detected by edge detection
operator. Meanwhile the larger leaf margin gray
dispersion at the junction of the leaf blade and 1 0 1 1 2 1
background can be detected by gradient operator. The M 1 = 2 0 2 M 2 = 0
0 0
leaf area is eroded to narrow the interest area by
using the circular structure element within the radius 1 0 1 1 2 1
of three. To multiply the binary image after corrosion Output Gray Value
by H component can achieve the target image with
[( )]
1
the black background. Sobel operator and the use of
H component convolution to obtain gradient image. ) (
2
G = M 1T F + M 2T F
2 2

Sobel operator with the form of vector can be

decomposed into the following two models [16].

H Component Wiped Off Background Sobel Gradient Image Threshold Segmented Image

Region Filled Image Lesion Region Binary Image Detected Lesion Image
Fig.2 Segmentation of Disease Region

A suitable threshold binary gradient image is

chosen. From the figure it can be seen that the lesion
edge can be well detected. Because the edge is
closed, the region can be filled to obtain integrated
lesion image. It can be seen from the figure that
although some veins can be detected, they can be
dealt as noise since they are scattered and their unit
area is small compared to the lesion case. To select
the appropriate circular structure elements to unseal
to obtain the final binary image of lesion. After
scanning the number of pixels 1 in the lesion
( x , y )Rd
region is 6602. Thus it can be calculated that the ratio
t of the lesion and leaf area is 0.027. According to
the grade table(as the following table 1) of the
soybean gray leaf spot disease provided by the
literature [4], the infected level of the leaf is T2
after programming to check up the table.
Tab.1 Rank Table of Soybean Leaf Spot Disease
Ratio of Lesion to Leaf
Disease Level
Area
T0 t =0
T1 0 < t 0.01
T2 0.01 < t 0.05
T3 0.05 < t 0.2
T4 0 .2 < t 0 .5
T5 0 .5 < t 1
4 Conclusion
Plant diseases happen under natural conditions and
their symptoms vary significantly under different and
in the different stages of disease. Whether the image
is segmented correctly or not determines the success
or failure of the study. With the use of Otsu leaves
are segmented. The white background is more
suitable for image segmentation proved by
experiments. Because of the variability of lesion
symptoms, threshold segmentation is not suitable for
use. This paper presents to segment lesion accurately
by using Sobel operator to extract lesion edge and
operations as region fill, morphology open operation
in the H component.
The usage of image processing technology for
plant disease degree grading eliminates the

493
subjectivity of traditional classification methods and
human-induced errors. Thus the estimation credibility
is improved and accurate data are provided for
disease studies. The method is also convenient, which
simply needs computers, digital cameras with the
combination of necessary software programs to
realize for the disease batch grading.
5 Acknowledgements
We acknowledge support of this work by National
Science and Technology Support Programme
(2006BAJ09B0702). We acknowledge support of this
work by Computer Department of Engineering
College in Northeast Agricultural University.
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