Reeb graph based examination of root development

This paper presents an approach to analyzeplant root development by means of topological image anal-ysis. For phenotyping of plants their root development, thearchitecture of their root systems and thereby root charac-teristics such as branches and branch endings are analyzed.In order to simplify the examination of root characteristicsand enable an efficient comparison of roots, a representa-tion of imaged root data by Reeb graphs is introduced. Reebgraphs capture the topology of the represented structure -in this case the locations of branches and branch endingsof the roots - and form a skeletal representation of the un-derlying image data in this way. As the roots are picturedas 2D image data, the projection of a 3D structure to a 2Dspace might result in an overlap of branches in the image.One major advantage when analyzing roots based on Reebgraphs is posed by the ability to immediately distinguish be-tween branching points and overlaps in the root structure.This is not as easily possible by an analysis solely based oncontours.