A Diode Laser Imaging detection technology in pesticide application

In order to solve the faults in usual detection of droplet distribution and motion in pesticide application and agricultural spraying field, a new method is given for the analysis of droplets characteristics and motion with PDIA (Particle/Droplet Image Analysis) and digital image processing technique. The diode laser is an illumination system that provides pulses of infrared laser light with variable pulse durations and pulse frequencies. During the analysis of the size of droplet and the velocity, images of droplets in pesticide spray field have been captured by using high-speed imager. The parameter of droplet such as size, perimeter, equivalent diameter, Shape factor and position etc, have been calculated with digital image processing technology. The trace of droplet in different frames has been tracked with the method, which is based on flag tracking and droplet neighborhood matching probability technique. The results showed this method can both realize the motion trace of droplet in different image frames and analyses the velocity of droplet. This technique can detect the droplet parameters quickly and accurately for agricultural sprays, and provide the basic way for research on flow visualization image analysis in pesticide application.