Primary Pitfalls in detection and analysis of diseased

chunk of Leaf Images

Ms.C.Mohana Priya Dr.P.R.Tamilselvi
Asst Professor, Department of Computer Applications, Asst Professor, Department of Computer Science ,
Tiruppur Kumaran College for women, Tirupur-641687 Government Arts and Science College, Komarapalayam.
mohanapriya.cmp@gmail.com selvipr2003@gmail.com

Abstract — In Agriculture, the plant leafs may be affected by Increase the image quality and k-means algorithm for cluster
various diseases and they can be detected by image processing identification[8].
techniques based on color, shape and its texture. The increase in
differences from a healthy to diseased leaf shows the increase in
severity of the disease. But, the image which is undergoing the
analysis for the detection of the diseased chunk may have busy or
complex background or presence of shadow in the leaf image,
inclusion of sunlight reflection which turns out to be a difficult
task in applying segmentation/ clustering techniques. The
diseased Plant leaf can undergo various techniques such as Image
Preprocessing, Histogram, Thresholding, Segmentation, Feature
extraction and Classification to identify the diseased fragment.
The challenging aspect in establishing these techniques is the
image condition. Certain affected leaf images may also contain
more than one symptom of diseased spot which is also a pitfall in
identifying the disease. This study reveals the complications of
the diseased images and how can be they dealt with.

I. INTRODUCTION

Digital image processing undergoes many stages in

detecting plant leaf diseases. Image Acquisition; Image
Preprocessing, Segmentation, K Means Clustering, Histogram
Analysis, Detection and Classification.

The images collected from a farm must be ready for

detection and analysis. Certain factors are difficult to detect
the disease and are the troublesome component in analysis.
This paper discusses about these hardships .These issues are
discussed in the following sections,
a. Lack of Lightening Effects
b. Complex/Busy background
c. Images with shadows
d. Overlapping of leafs
e. Exposure to Sunlight
f. Other pitfalls
If any one of the conditions exists in the diseased
images then the detection may be mislead. After applying
segmentation the infected plants can be identified. Each and
every situations due to characteristics of image condition,
shape variations or overlapped leafs may lead to a wrong
decision. Histogram equalization is performed in order to
II. LITERATURE SURVEY
Anal Barbedo discusses the main challenges in
automatic plant disease identification. The several factors may
influence the characteristics of the images, making it more
difficult for an automatic algorithm to perform a meaningful
analysis [3] . This is the base paper and author suggests some
factors which are challenging in identifying diseased segment.
Apart from the suggestions given in [3] which concentrate on
condition of diseased image which is with busy background,
image with specular reflections, several light/shadow
transitions there are other factors underlying in identifying
diseases based on shape. Overlapped leaf images can be
identified using edge detection. Chunlei Xia proposes a
method of multiple leaves with overlapping and
occlusion[5].The leaf models trained with pepper leaves were

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 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research
further tested with leaves of paprika but with complex
shapes[5]. Color, morphology and texture are three feature
vectors used for feature extraction of learning database
images[7]. By using Morphology, disease shape feature
vector is extracted from healthy leaf/fruit[7]. The author gets
better results for color and morphology as compared to texture
[7]. A preprocessing or filtering step is applied to minimize
the degradation related to the noise[9]. A cellular automata
filter reduces the noise in the original plant leaf image [9].
Plantvillage[2] is a free, open access platform for crop
health run by community of experts in agriculture. Most of the
diseased images discussed here are from plantvillage [2].
Leafsnap dataset, which consists of 23,147 lab images and
7719 field images, consists of blur, noise, illumination
patterns, shadows etc. This dataset covers around 185 tree
species and these species can be identified using shape and
morphological analysis of image processing [1].
III. LACKING LIGHTNING/RESOLUTION
Some images may not be taken under proper lighting
conditions and with high resolution. In Figure 1 the veins of
the leaves are found clear at the top and so the internal veins
can be identified, but at the bottom image the veins are
invisible. This may prevent from proper analysis of infection
or damage in veins if any. The Sytrax Obassia leaves taken
from Leafsnap dataset is shown below
Figure 1: Differences of visible/Invisible veins in a healthy Leaf
The primary pitfall in recognizing diseased part of
leaf is its lack of high resolution and a standard in quality of
lightning effects. The Figure 2 has damaged part of veins in
the leaf. This particular ruin can be identified only on a clear
and distinct image of the diseased leaf.
Figure 2: Damaged Veins of Diseased Leafs
Some disturbance or noise found in the image can
be removed in image preprocessing stage . ‘Image
Enhancement’ is the process that is to be applied. Image
Enhancement can be applied using Laplacian Filter or Median
Filter.
IV.COMPLEX /BUSY BACKGROUND
Leaf images may include busy or complex
background. The background may include plants,leafs
soil,sand or any other element which may be challenging for
segmentation. The segmentation seems to be a threat if
background contains other components.
These background can be eliminated and only target leaf can
be extracted .
Figure 3: Background Elimination.
The Leaf image is filtered from the background image
and the diseased leaf alone is extracted in Figure 3. Masking
out the pixels background , the leaf-only images can be
extracted. L*, a*, b* channel can be used to segmentize leaf
from the background. Colour Thresholder app in MATLAB
can generate mask and remove the background. [6]
V. IMAGES WITH SHADOW
The shadows may be misinterrupted as disease and
segmentation result in erroneous estimation of disease. The
darkness in the leaf left behind as shade may be wrongly
diagnoised as a diseased chunk. This is a challenging aspect in
disease detection using image processing.
Figure 4(a). Leaf with shadow shade
Figure 4(b)Leaf with shadow shade is erroneously identified as diseased part.
Leaf with the shadow shade is specified in Figure 4
above is taken from Leafsnap data set.The figure 4(a) shows
the original image with shadow. The figure 4(b) shows the
segmentation applied to the above leaf image leads to an
erroneous detection of shadow part as diseased part.
 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research

VI. OVERLAPPING OF LEAFS

Normally a single leaf can have vein and its edges as
boundaries. If leaves tend to overlap then its boundaries are to
be identified. Image of overlapping leaf are initiaally
converted to its gray values and its boundaries are identified.

Figure 7:Fresh Vine Grape leaf with red markings under sunlight with
shadows

The fresh vine grape leaf with red markings under sunlight
Figure 5: Overlapping Leaf and its Edge Extraction is exposed in Figure 7. The sunlight illumination in the above
makes segmentation a risky task.Reflection is the difficult
The shape features that facilitate to identify the edges are illumination that makes the clustering to be erroneous.
Aspect ratio, Eccentricity, Roundness and Convex hull.[4]
The solution is to alter the angle of capture of the image.
Aspect Ratio(AR): Ratio of length of the major axis to that
of the minor axis of the leaf.[4] VIII. OTHER PITFALLS
Eccentricity(E): Measure of how much an object deviates Normally have to rely on symptoms for the
from a circle.[4] identification of a disease, but cannot always assume that
disease symptoms will always have same characteristics.
Roundness( R ): Roundness of a leaf of an irregular shape There may be variations in colour, shape and size which may
is closer to zero.[4] be acting as the toughest factors in classifying the diseases.
Figure 5 shows how leaf overlap each other and its edges The symptom variations, multiple diseases and different
are extracted. Later these leaves can be separated from its busy diseases with similar symptoms are discussed under this
background. section.[3]
a. Symptom Variations
Variations in symptoms expressed by diseased
plants may lead to an improper diagnosis of diseases. The
symptoms may differ due to many factors which may
influence them. Those variations may occur due to the
following reasons,
(i) Disease
Figure 6: Extraction of Single Leafs (ii) Plant
The Figure 6 shows extracted bunch of single leaf (iii) Environment
from the overlapped leafs given in Figure 5. Appropriate
extraction algorithms can be applied. An Edge detection filter Disease: The symptom found in avacado leaves shown in
imfilter is used to improve the appearance of blurred or anti- Figure 8 taken from plantvillage changes as infection
aliased images. Canny Edge Detecor can be used to detect the progresses.
edges of overlapped leafs.
VII. EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT ILLUMINATION
WITH REFLECTIONS
Diseased leaf images may contain reflection of
sunlight with difficult illumination. This reflection may
disturb the image characteristics and shadows present in the
leaf might interupt segmentation process. Position of the sun
with respect to leaf can affect the image characteristics.
Feature Extraction concentrates on the local and global
features. The local features are illumination, occlusion and
background. The intensity variations are captured through
mean and variance of the RGB channels. Contrast is a measure
of difference in luminance within same field of view is also
used to track intensity variations. Thresholding can segment
foreground and background images. Colour image plant leaf
is converted to a gray scale image. All features are then
extracted from the grayscale image. Contrast, Correlation, Figure 8: Symptom change as infection progresses
Energy and Homogenity are calculated.
 2017 IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Computing Research
So identification and classification seems to be a complex
task as this severity of symptom change may vary from one
disease to other. The first diagram shows potassium deficiency
and second shows severe potassium deficiency. The first thing
that should be noted is how the diseased plants are distributed
over the affected area. Whether are they distributed uniformly
across an area or are they localized? Is there a definite pattern
to the distribution? Due to the Progress of disease these
distribution might change turning out to be a difficult task in
classification.
Plant: The plant genotype, colour variations and leaf age is
an important factor.
Environment: Factors like humidity, exposure to sunlight,
temparature, wind and other mateorological phenomenas
might be the cause for variations of symptom of diseased
chunk.
Figure 9:Corn bleach
High temperature resulted in corn bleach as shown in
Figure 9 is taken from plantvillage. The Sunscald occurs
when tomatoes or peppers are exposed to the direct rays of the
sun during hot weather conditions.
b. Multiple Disease/disorder
Not only one disease is present but other kind
of disorders may also be applied.
Figure 10: (a) Upper side showing yellowing along veins
Dorsal side of the same leaf
The same plant may be affected by more than
one disease at a time. This situation as shown in
Figure 10(a) is given in plantvillage. The cucumber
leafs showing yellowing along the veins. Figure 10(b)
shows the doral side of the same leaf showing water
soaked soaps. The two virus are Cucumber Vein
Yellowing Virus and CVYV(Cucumber Vein
Yellowing Ipomo Virus)[2].
The disease classification turns out to be difficult and
classification has to be examined appropriately in this
kind of multiple disorders.
c. Different diseases with similar symptoms
Leaf affected by different diseases may have
similar symptoms which is is challenging to identify.
Peppermint plant shown in Figure 11 given in
plantvillage has pale small spots on them, which
seemed liked spider mite damage. But it is leaf hopper
damage. Most of the time the symptoms may be
confused with spider mite. The main symptoms are
yellowing and stippling of leaves.
Figure 11: Leafhopper feeding in peppermint plant
Severe damage may lead to dull leaves which
turn yellow or gray, and eventually brown.These
similar symptoms may lead to confusion which is
tough to identify.
IX.CONCLUSION
This paper is a study on various pitfalls in
plant leaf disease detection before applying image
processing techniques. Before an image is taken for
analysis these challenges are to be carefully examined
so that detection and classification can be accurately
made.
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