Fig. 3

Flow chart of the three main steps of the automated phenotypic data acquisition (indicated in gray). In step I, the position of the culture vessel is determined, while in step II the initial images and the calculated plant positions are acquired. To determine plant positions, the original image was transformed to hsv-colorspace and the h-channel was segmented with Otsu-Method [20]. Four largest objects were selected as plant positions. Step III includes the actual time-lapse loop (start indicated by asterisk), where data of the four sensors are recorded. Detailed description in “Methods” section