Using Optical Flow for Botanical Video Analysis
Jason Holloway
Class of 2010
Electrical Engineering/Physics
Mentor: Dr. Aaron Luttman
A vital component of photosynthesis in plants is the absorption of gaseous carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
surrounding environment. Photosynthesis can be inferred through fluorescence that varies inversely with
photosynthetic activity. The fluorescence is measured as video data, and the fluorescence dynamics can be
analyzed using optical flow. Optical flow is a method for generating vector fields that indicate how the
fluorescence patches flow across the surface of the leaf. The optical flow is found by minimizing an
energy integral whose minimizer is the solution to a pair of coupled partial differential equations.
Collectively, the vector fields quantify how the patches change with time, which is a qualitative measure
of carbon absorption.
2010
Electrical Engineering
Honors
Advisor: Dr. Luttman