Robust tree-ring detection

Abstract

The study of tree-rings is a common task in dendrology. Usually the rings deliver information about the age of the tree, historic climate conditions and forest densities. Many different techniques exist to perform the tree-ring detection, but they commonly are semi-automatic. The main idea of this work is to propose an automatic process for the tree-ring detection and compare it with a manual detection made by an expert in dendrology. The proposed technique is based on a variant of the Generalized Hough Transform (GHT) created using a very simple growing model of the tree. The presented automatic algorithm shows tolerance to textured and very noisy images, giving a good tree-ring recognition in most of the cases. In particular, it correctly detects the 80% of the tree-rings in our sample database. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.