Abstract
For researchers to measure leaf area easily even in fields, we developed an image analysis software package, BioImage, to measure leaf area from binary image data of leaves acquired by a scanner or a digital camera. BioImage has the following five properties: 1. It runs on a Windows PC,. It is easily installed by a installer program, 3. It is easily operated under a GUI environment, 4. No need for a scale when the scanner is used and 5. It handles BMP and TIFF image formats only.
We made a comparison between the BioImage and a leaf area measurement device. Though the binalization error of a vein at a leaf base in BioImage decreased an accuracy, the accuracy of the measurement about 1% was obtained. It was shown that this accuracy was enough to measure the leaf area. BioImage enables us to measure leaf area on an available PC. If binary image data of leaves are saved, character values of leaf shape, such as its length and width, can be measured on the PC in the future.
