LeMuR: Plant Root Phenotyping via Learned Multi-resolution Image Segmentation

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Plant phenotyping - the measurement of quantitative data on plant structure and function from image and sensor data - is a key bottleneck holding back efforts towards global food security; that is, providing enough food for a growing population. The roots of food crops are clearly important for the development of the crop itself, yet root phenotyping is particularly challenging, as the roots grow in soil. Though methods of imaging roots in soil are emerging, they remain slow and expensive. Large-scale experiments are still performed using artificial growth media (gel, filter paper etc.) that allow the root to be imaged using conventional equipment. Analysis of the resulting images requires the root to be separated from its background and a structural description of the root architecture to be produced and presented to the user. But doing this fully automatically is a challenge, and most software tools written to date work with very specific sets of images, and tend to break if used outside of the scenarios they were designed for.In this proposal we will develop cutting-edge deep learning analysis approaches to build a much more general software tool. So-called deep approaches are revolutionising image analysis, with large companies developing similar techniques to analyse other image sets, such as for diagnosing medical conditions, to great effect. The proposed approach, LeMuR (Learned Multi-Resolution image segmentation), will exploit the common structure of root image analysis tasks, and recent advances in deep machine learning, to produce a flexible plant root phenotyping tool that can be easily adapted, without re-writing code, to new laboratory environments and imaging techniques.We propose two main developments. First, a software tool LeMuRoot which will be designed to work across a wide variety of root system data sets right out of the box, compared to the limited application of traditional tools. Second, a software framework (LeMuRLearn) to allow biologists themselves to adapt the tool to even more images beyond those that LeMuRoot was designed to work with. By supplying their own image data sets annotated using a novel user interface which will form part of LeMuRLearn, biologists will be able to re-train the core model underlying the tools, allowing them to improve the quality of results for their particular data. In a further novel process, biologists will be able to seamlessly share their newly trained tool with the community, which in turn can be used as a base for further development. This will allow LeMuRLearn to incrementally improve over time, and for it to use different underlying models for a wider variety of image data sets than was conceived of at initial release.This is exciting for two main reasons. First, previous development of software tools has by necessity been limited to computer scientists who are capable programmers - here we put the continued development of the tool in the hands of the biology community themselves. Second, by sharing the core model underlying the tool (called the LeMuRNet), biologists can share with the community without fear of sharing raw data or results.Combined with hiding the computational complexity of both the analysis and evolution process behind an accessible user interface, the potential to disrupt the current process for image analysis tool development and use with plant science (and beyond) is high.