Automated Chinese medicinal plants classification based on machine learning using leaf morpho-colorimetry, fractal dimension and visible/near infrared spectroscopy

Abstract

The identification of Chinese medicinal plants was used to rely on ampelographic manual assessment by experts. More recently, machine learning algorithms for pattern recognition have been successfully applied to leaf recognition in other plant species. These new tools make the classification of Chinese medicinal plants easier, more efficient and cost effective. This study showed comparative results between machine learning models obtained from two methods: i) a morpho-colorimetric method and ii) a visible (VIS)/Near Infrared (NIR) spectral analysis from sampled leaves of 20 different Chinese medicinal plants. Specifically, the automated image analysis and VIS/NIR spectral based parameters ob..