A Portable High-Resolution Snapshot Multispectral Imaging Device Leveraging Spatial and Spectral Features for Non-Invasive Corn Nitrogen Treatment Classification

Abstract

Spectral imaging has been widely applied in plant phenotyping to assess corn leaf nitrogen status. Recent studies indicate that spatial variations within a single leaf’s multispectral image provide stronger signals for corn nitrogen estimation. However, current technologies for corn multispectral imaging cannot capture a large corn leaf segment with high-resolution and simple operation, limiting their efficiency and accuracy in nitrogen estimation. To address this gap, this study developed a proximal multispectral imaging device that can capture high-resolution snapshot multispectral images of a large segment of a single corn leaf. This device uses airflow to autonomously position and flatten the leaf to minimize the noise in images due to leaf curvature and simplify operation. Moreover, this device adopts a transmittance imaging regime by clamping the corn leaf between the camera and the lighting source to block the environmental lights and supply uniform lighting to capture high-resolution and high-precision leaf images within six seconds. A field assay was conducted to validate the effectiveness of the multispectral images captured by this device in assessing nitrogen status by classifying the nitrogen treatments applied to corn. Six nitrogen treatments were applied to 12 plots of corn fields, and 10 images were collected at each plot. By using the average vegetative index of the whole image, only one treatment was significantly different from the other five treatments, and no significant difference was observed among any other groups. However, by extracting the spatial and spectral features from the images and combining these features, the accuracy of nitrogen treatment classification improved compared to using the average index. In another analysis, by applying spatial–spectral analysis methods to the images, the nitrogen treatment classification accuracy has improved compared to using the average index. These results demonstrated the advantages of this high-resolution and high-throughput imaging device for distinguishing nitrogen treatments by facilitating spatial–spectral combined analysis for more precise classification.