Photogrammetric reconstruction of 3D carpological collection in high resolution for plants authentication and species discovery

Abstract

This study provides an accurate and efficient method to reconstruct detailed and high-resolution digital 3D models of carpological materials by photogrammetric method, in which only about 100 to 150 images are required for each model reconstruction. The 3D models reflect the realistic morphology and genuine color of the carpological materials. The 3D models are scaled to represent the true size of the materials even as small as 3 mm in diameter. The interfaces are interactive, in which the 3D models can be rotated in 360° to observe the structures and be zoomed to inspect the macroscopic details. This new platform is beneficial for developing a virtual herbarium of carpological collection which is thus the most important to botanical authentication and education.

Code and data availability

The authors publicly host the 3D models of carpological materials reconstructed in this study (100 models from the paper, over 250 released) in the 'Virtual Carpological Herbarium of Fruits and Seeds' online database. This is a paper-specific public asset directly reproducing the paper's phenotyping outputs. Software (