Image Analysis: Basic Procedures for Description of Plant Structures

Methods Mol Biol. 2019:1992:109-119. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-9469-4_7.

Abstract

This chapter gives examples of basic procedures of quantification of plant structures with use of image analysis, which are commonly employed to describe differences among experimental treatments or phenotypes of plant material. Tasks are demonstrated with the use of ImageJ, a widely used public domain Java image processing program. Principles of sampling design based on systematic uniform random sampling for quantitative studies of anatomical parameters are given to obtain their unbiased estimations and simplified "rules of thumb" are presented. The basic procedures mentioned in the text are: (1) sampling, (2) calibration, (3) manual length measurement, (4) leaf surface area measurement, (5) estimation of particle density demonstrated on an example of stomatal density, and (6) analysis of epidermal cell shape.

Keywords: Counting frame; Experimental design; Image analysis; Image calibration; Length estimation; Number estimation; Stereology; Stomatal density; Systematic uniform random sampling; Unbiased estimation.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Image Processing, Computer-Assisted / methods*
  • Microscopy / methods
  • Optical Imaging / methods
  • Plant Epidermis / anatomy & histology*
  • Plant Epidermis / ultrastructure
  • Plant Leaves / anatomy & histology*
  • Plant Leaves / ultrastructure
  • Plant Stomata / anatomy & histology
  • Plant Stomata / ultrastructure
  • Plants / anatomy & histology*
  • Plants / ultrastructure
  • Software