Multi-excitation, hyperspectral autofluorescence imaging for the exploration of a set of images of wheat grains during development

Many plant tissues can be observed thanks to the autofluorescence of their cell wall components. Hyperspectral autofluorescence imaging at the macroscopic scale is a fast and efficient way of observing samples with a large field of view and a high resolution. The objective of this work was to evaluate multi-excitation hyperspectral autofluorescence imaging at the macroscopic scale to identify the biological components in wheat grains during their development through their spectral profiles and contribution maps using MCR-ALS under proper constraints. For this purpose two different scenarios were used: 1) analysing the total spectral domain of data sets using MCR-ALS under non negativity constraint in both modes; 2) analysing the reduced spectral domain of data sets using MCR-ALS under non negativity in both modes and trilinearity constraint in spectral mode. Contribution maps and spectral profiles of constituents are complementary information used to identify biological molecules from this kind of data sets.