Dual scan PlantEyes – 3D & Multispectral “Camera to Plant” laser scanners

NPEC is using the dual scan PlantEyes in the two sensor-to-plant compartments in module 5. These are laser scanners which fuses the 3D data with RGBi (multispectral) information.

The sensor computes a wide range of plant parameters in real time. These parameters describe the shape and the physiological status of plants, like the digital biomass, leaf area, height or plant health (NDVI and more).

PlantEye is developed with the “Camera to plant” principle. Therefore it is designed to be waterproof, temperature controlled and to function independent of environmental light.

The PlantEye’s are delivered by the Dutch company Phenospex and has been mounted to the SMO Gantries.

3D Plant Model is generated to calculate plant parameters

A 3D model of your plant, tray, plot or even entire field is generated by PlantEye. The plant model is built out of points called a 3D point cloud and stored as an open-source .ply file.

 

Every point contains the following information:

• Color value in Red, Green, Blue, Near-Infrared and the laser (940nm)
• NDVI value

The 3D model is stored, raw data and computed plant parameters are available as open source files. 14+ plant parameters are calculated from these 3D models.

Plant parameters

14+ parameters are calculated from the 3D files. Visualize plant growth with a wide variety of morphological parameters such as:

• Digital biomass
• Plant height
• Plant height max
• 3D leaf area
• Projected leaf area
• Leaf inclination
• Leaf area index
• Leaf Angle
• Light penetration depth

PlantEye measures the spectral reflectance of part of the plant. Specific spectral ranges can be quantified with a binning system and each bin is an additional parameter. Each wavelength can be statistically analyzed individually to calculate and quantify:

• RGB Color
• NIR Color
• Greenness

Wavelengths can be combined into the following spectral indices:

• Normalized Digital Vegetation Index (NDVI)
• Normalized Pigments Chlorophyll ratio index (NPCI)
• Plant Senescence Reflectance Index (PSRI)

Studies show that the applications below can be derived from, or correlated with, one or several of the plant parameters.

• Disease quantification
• Plant healthiness
• Plant senescence
• Chlorophyll levels
• Carotenoid content
• N-Content