Automatic counting of stomata in epidermis microscopic images

Stomata are small pores in epidermis of plants being their diversity an important feature for morphologists and physiologists. Through their diversity of characteristics (size, shape, density, responsiveness to desiccation, pore dimensions, orientation, etc.) the leaf epidermis may be studied. However, there is a great difficulty in counting stomata, especially when there are a large number of samples to be analysed, since this task is performed manually, depending on the expert experience. This paper proposes the automatic detection and counting of stomata through morphological operations in epidermis microscopic images. With this approach, an accuracy rate of 94.3% was achieved, detecting and counting the stomata in 24 images from 5 plant species, indicating that the results obtained are promising.