• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.227-236
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• 1997

Manual grading and sorting of red-ginsengs are inherently unreliable due to its subjective nature. A computerized technique based on optical and geometrical characteristics was studied for the objective quality evalution. Spectral reflectance of three categories of red-ginsengs - "Chunsam", "Chisam", "Yangsam" - were measured and analyzed. Variation of reflectance among parts of a single ginseng was more significant than variation among the quality categories of ginsengs. A PC-based image processing algorithm was developed to extract geometrical features such as length and thickness of body, length and number of roots, position of head and branch point, etc. The algorithm consisted of image segmentation, calculation of Euclidean distance, skeletonization and feature extraction. Performance of the algorithm was evaluated using sample ginseng images and found to be mostly sussessful.