Classification of plant leaf images with complicated background

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 segmentation 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%.