F2DMAS: a smartphone video-based 3D phenotyping workflow for potted plants in complex backgrounds

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Authors: Jian Fang, Nengfu Xie, Yane Duan, Jingchao Fan, X Wang, Hailong Liu, Huoguo Zheng, Hao Wu, Zhibo Meng, X Wang, Rui Man
Cited by: 1
References: 30

Abstract

Introduction: Plant phenotyping requires accurate and repeatable three-dimensional structural information, but practical acquisition conditions in greenhouses, seedling rooms, and indoor pot experiments often include complex backgrounds, handheld motion blur, and thin leaf structures. These factors reduce the robustness of conventional three-dimensional reconstruction methods and limit their use in low-cost and automated phenotyping. Methods: To address this problem, this paper proposes F2DMAS, an automated three-dimensional plant phenotyping workflow using consumer-grade smartphone videos. The workflow first converts multiview RGB videos into image sequences and removes motion-blurred frames through frequency-domain quality filtering. A frequency-spatial plant segmentation module, termed FSAM3, is then introduced to separate plant structures from complex backgrounds without task-specific annotated training data. The segmented image sequences are further reconstructed using 2D Gaussian Splatting, followed by TSDF-based meshing, scale recovery, and virtual measurement for extracting plant height, canopy width, leaf length, and leaf width. Results: Experiments were conducted on 15 plant species under two acquisition scenarios. The proposed workflow achieved stable plant reconstruction under non-ideal background conditions, with PSNR, SSIM, and LPIPS values of 31.09, 0.9711, and 0.0365, respectively. Compared with the baseline reconstruction workflow, F2DMAS substantially reduced the processing time for mesh extraction while improving reconstruction quality. The extracted phenotypic traits showed strong agreement with manual measurements, with R² values ranging from 0.90 to 0.99, RMSE values ranging from 0.64 to 1.21 cm, and MAPE values ranging from 4.50% to 9.73%. Discussion: These results indicate that F2DMAS can provide an end-to-end workflow from smartphone video acquisition and plant segmentation to three-dimensional reconstruction and phenotypic trait extraction. The proposed method offers a practical and deployable solution for greenhouse seedling cultivation, potted plant experiments, and low-cost three-dimensional plant phenotyping.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Smart Agriculture and AI Leaf Properties and Growth Measurement Greenhouse Technology and Climate Control

Publication details

Journal / source
Frontiers in Plant Science
Publisher
Frontiers Media SA
Volume
17
Pages
1885579–1885579
Publication date
8 July 2026
Language
EN