README.md

Panorama2BasalArea

Calculate forest BA values from spherical(panorama) images by manual tree selection.

Backgrounds

Basal area is the area of a given section of land that is occupied by the cross-section of tree trunks and stems at the base

An Angle gauge is a tool used by foresters to determine which trees to measure when using a variable radius plot design in forest inventory. Using this tool a forester can quickly measure the trees that are in or out of the plot

To be more specific, the angle gauge does the thing like this:

If a tree exceed the given angle, it is counted as "in" tree, the Basal Area (BA) can be simply calculated by: BA = in tree num * BAF, where BAF is basal area factor determined by angle size.

If we have a panorama photo in forest like this: it can be simplified by counting the tree pixel width to determine whether it is "in" or "out", that is the reason why we develop this software.

Main functions:

1. project management based on sqlite database.
2. import single image and all images in one folder (and its child folders) whose name contain given keywords
3. image photo brightness equalization to show more details in overexposed and underexposed regions
4. image zoom in and out to get more details
5. tree management
   • add trees
   • edit trees
   • delete trees
6. export result excel files

Operations

1. Project management

1. File > New: create a new project (Ctrl + N)
2. File > open: open a former project (Ctrl + O)
3. File > save: save changes to current project (Ctrl + S)
4. File > export: export results to a excel file
   • Default BAF: Export BA results based on each image defined BAF
   • BAF sequence: Export different BA results on each image for several given BAFs, the BAF sequence is generated by users inputting the start, end, and step values, e.g. (st=1, ed=3, step=0.5) will give a BAF sequence [1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3]

2. Image management

1. Add img: add spherical image to this project
   • Yes: select folder first, then type keywords in image name need to import.
     • * or leaving blank is importing all images (default)
     • keywords need split by ; or by space
     • - before a keyword (e.g. -X) mean ignore images contain 'X'
   • No: select a single spherical image to import
2. Del img: remove the selected image from this project Warning: this operation will also delete all tree records in this image as well.
3. left-click on image name: show this image and its trees information
4. right-click on image name: change default BAF value of this image (default is 2)
5. mouse-wheel-click on image name: change all images' default BAF values at once.

3. Tree management

This software has two different tree marking modes (Edge Marking and Target Count):

Two different mode can be switched by clicking the Tree Management Panel:

1. Add trees

   1. ctrl + mousewhell: zoom images to proper size, the software title will tell you current zoom ratio, release ctrl to finish zoom in)

   2. Press Space switching to adding tree mode (cursor will change to +)

   3. Press r to display/hide a minimum tree reference bar (baf=1.0) hover mouse to determine current tree should add or not

   ---Edge Marking Mode---

   1. left-click to add the first point of tree boundary

   2. move to another boundary, left-click for another boundary point

      • if the line between two points color is red, currently is out tree
      • if line color is blue, it is a in tree
      • default, the line is locked to be horizontal
      • press shift to unlock and create lines for leaned trees

   

   ---Target Counting Mode--- left-click to mark those tree bigger than reference octagon

2. Edit trees

   ---Edge Mode---

   1. left-click the tree record, the image will center this tree line

3. drag the boundary point to change position (hold shift for leaned tree)

   

   ---Target Mode---

   Click and Drag Directly

   

4. Delete trees

   1. select the tree record and press delete
   2. a delete confirmation dialog will appear

   

Updates

Beta1.0: Finish all functions mentioned above