Biospeckle assessment of torn plant leaf tissue and automated computation of leaf vein density (LVD)

Biomedical Optics Laboratory, Department of Applied Physics, Indian School of Mines Dhanbad, 826004 Jharkhand, India

^* e-mail: mohamedzaheer1@gmail.com

Received: 11 January 2015
Revised: 25 March 2015
Accepted: 7 April 2015
Published online: 21 May 2015

Abstract

In this work we propose an alternative measure of biospeckle activity in biological leaf tissues. The activity images obtained using the proposed method i.e., weighted parameterized Fujii method show relatively higher contrast compared to the existing methods. Leave veins which were not visible using the existing methods are clearly visible using the proposed method. In addition, we have also measured leaf vein density (LVD) within a leaf tissue using biospeckle technique for the first time, to the best of our knowledge. Algorithm for computing LVD from activity images generated by the proposed method is described to facilitate ease in adopting this method.