Accurate LAI estimation of soybean plants in the field using deep learning and clustering algorithms

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The leaf area index (LAI) is a critical parameter for characterizing plant foliage abundance, canopy structure changes, and vegetation productivity in ecosystems. Traditional phenological measurements are often destructive, time-consuming, and labor-intensive. This paper proposes a high-throughput 3D point cloud data processing pipeline to segment field soybean plants and estimate their LAI. The 3D point cloud data is obtained from a UAV equipped with a LiDAR camera. First, The PointNet++ model was applied to simplify the segmentation process by isolating field soybean plants from their surroundings and eliminating environmental complexities. Subsequently, individual segmentation was achieved using the Watershed approach and k-means clustering algorithms, segmenting the field soybeans into individual plants. Finally, the LAI of soybean plant was estimated using a machine learning method and validated against measured values. The PointNet++ model improved segmentation accuracy by 6.73%, and the watershed algorithm achieved F1 scores of 0.89–0.90, outperforming k-means in complex adhesion cases. For LAI estimation, the SVM model showed the highest accuracy (R² = 0.79, RMSE = 0.47), with RF and XGBoost also performing well (R² > 0.69, RMSE< 0.65). This indicates that the individual segmentation algorithm, Watershed-based approach combined with PointNet++, can serve as a crucial foundation for extracting high-throughput plant phenotypic data. The experimental results confirm that the proposed method can rapidly calculate the morphological parameters of each soybean plant, making it suitable for high-throughput soybean phenotyping.