Wood Product Tracking Using an Improved AKAZE Method in Wood Traceability System

Tracking of the wood product is an important technology in the trade activity of rare plants. Normally, the factories use Quick Response (QR) and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) to identify the individual wood product, but these technologies are not safe enough because they can be easily falsified. It can be seen that traditional methods are hard to catch the detail of the slim wood texture from the wood product. In this study, a novel method is employed to resolve these problems using a biometric feature on the surface of the real wood product to distinguish the individual wood product. AKAZE is used to extract the key-point of wood texture. A sub-area detection technique along with a serialization method is then developed to improve the rate of identification. The sub-area detection technique deals with picking out a sub-region in which there are enough AKAZE points as small as possible. The serialization method is also utilized to reduce the redundant process of feature extraction. The experimental results demonstrate that the values of accuracy, recall, and $F1$ reach 0.98, 0.96, and 0.96, respectively. The match time that uses serialized function is reduced to 1/3 of which has no application in the original image. The validated results also reveal that our proposed methodology improves the robustness of the wood product identification, and it can be used in Wood Traceability System (WTS) with the blockchain to resolve the digital trust problem and the fast distinction issues of the real wood product.