Iftach Klapp

Agricultural Research Organization ARO | aro · Institute of Agricultural Engineering

A growing world population together with a decrease in water resources have resulted in a deficit in water sources for agriculture. Nations with limited water resources are already using recycled treated water as a vital water source for irrigation. In 2019, treated wastewater made up 45% of the overall agricultural water consumption in Israel. Sin...

Increasing global water deficit and demand for yield improvement call for high-resolution monitoring of irrigation, crop water stress, and crops' general condition. To provide high spatial resolution with high-temperature accuracy, remote sensing is conducted at low altitudes using radiometric longwave thermal infrared cameras. However, the radiome...

Generation of yield maps enables making agronomic decisions related to resource management and marketing, leading to improved production and breeding processes. Estimating melon yield production before harvest at single-melon resolution is a labor-intensive task, requiring a detailed account of accumulated yield and general yield distribution, as w...

Infrared (IR) imagery is used in agriculture for irrigation monitoring and early detection of disease in plants. The common IR cameras in this field typically have low resolution. This work offers a method to obtain the super-resolution of IR images from low-power devices to enhance plant traits. The method is based on deep learning (DL). Most calc...

Dispersion analysis, model validation and a white balancing procedure of a low-cost hyperspectral sampling system, are presented.

Low cost, weight, and size microbolometer-based thermal focal plane arrays are attractive for thermal-imaging applications. Under environmental loads like those in agricultural remote sensing, these cameras tend to suffer from drift in gain and offset with time and thus require constant calibration. Our goal is to skip this step via computational i...

One of the more labor-intensive operations in ornamental fish farms is fish counting. It is performed primarily when spawned fry are collected and introduced into grow-out tanks and when preparing fish for marketing. For various reasons such as cost and mode of operation of existing counting systems and inability to combine them with existing farm...

We propose an algorithmic pipeline for automated yield tracking from images of a melon field captured by a drone. Gathering exact yield statistics automatically saves on an otherwise labor-intensive task.

We present a design of a low cost hyperspectral imaging system based on Risley prism LOS steering, demonstrating the system’s performances and limitations. Results show spatial resolution ~5 times higher than standard aerial survey.

A novel algorithm combining sparse dictionary learning with variational method segmentation enables recognizing outbursts of macrophomina in cotton field images taken from a drone.

Due to low cost and small size, uncooled microbolometer-based thermal focal plane arrays are very attractive for radiometry. However, being non-cooled, they suffer from temporally and spatially dependent changes that require constant calibration. While the gain calibration can be reasonably realized by two-point correction, the offset due to intern...

To use VRI systems, a field is divided into irrigation management zones (IMZs). While IMZs are dynamic in nature, most of IMZs prescription maps are static. High-resolution thermal images (TI) coupled with measured atmospheric conditions have been utilized to map the within-field water status variability and to delineate in-season IMZs. Unfortunate...

Due to low cost and small size, uncooled microbolometer-based thermal focal plane arrays (UC-FPAs) are very attractive for radiometry. However, being non-cooled, they suffer from temporally and spatially dependent changes that require constant calibration. While the gain calibration can be reasonably realized by two-point correction, the offset due...

An optical-digital tunable depth of field (DOF) methodology is presented. The suggested methodology forms a fused image based on the sharpest similar depth regions (SDRs) from a set of source images taken with different phase masks. Each phase mask contains a different degree of DOF extension and implemented by using an annular liquid crystal spati...

Micro-bolometer based thermal focal plane array is very attractive for radiometric imaging. We introduce a new method, to perform on site calibration of unknown spatially dependent drift and gain thermal images for this goal

Micro-bolometer based thermal focal plane array is very attractive for radiometric imaging. We introduce a new method, which simplifies the essential calibration for temperature drift, by using two images, taken successively with different blur level.

In previous works we have shown that parallel optics (PO) architecture can be used to improve the system matrix condition, which results in improving its immunity to additive noise in the image restoration process. PO is composed of a “main” system and an “auxiliary” system. Previously, we suggested the “trajectories” method to realize PO. In that...

Following the mature liquid crystals (LCs) display technology, there is a significant interest in implementing these devices into other non-display applications. Hence the emerging field of LC photonics is becoming increasingly active in which the strong electrooptic properties of LCs are harnessed for these applications particularly for imaging su...

A detailed investigation is presented on the tunable extended depth of field (EDOF) method, proposed recently by Klapp et al. [Opt. Lett.39, 1414 (2014)]. This method is based on temporal multiplexing of phase masks, using an annular liquid crystal spatial light modulator possessing a small number of rings. Examples of 3D simulations used to determ...

A tunable extended depth of field (EDOF) imaging is presented using temporal multiplexing and a low-cost eight-ring, annular liquid crystal spatial light modulator. By changing between different phase profiles in the pupil plane of a lens we perform several levels of EDOF. Using these levels as a "database" it is shown by temporal multiplexing how...

A new adaptive implementation of the Fresnel incoherent correlation holography (FINCH) is presented. By implementing phase diversity mechanism, we allow wavefront error compensation without the need of a guide star. Simulation results present significant resolution improvement. OCIS codes: (090.1995) Digital Holography; (100.3010) Image Reconstruct...

We present for the first time experimental results of the & ldquo;trajectories& rdquo; method, when one channel is blurred and the other is noisy. Results show an improvement in both the matrix condition and image restoration.

The TOMBO system (thin observation module by bound optics) is a multichannel subimaging system over a single electronic imaging device. Each subsystem provides a low-resolution (LR) image from a unique lateral point of view. By estimating the image's lateral position, a high-resolution (HR) image is restored from the series of the LR images. This p...

We present preliminary experimental results for implementing the "blurred trajectories" method on three parallel optics (PO) systems. The "main" system and "auxiliary" optics were simple laboratory graded lenses attached to an iris diaphragm. When applying the blurred trajectories method we first show an improvement in the matrix condition, as the...

In our previous work we showed the ability to improve the optical system's matrix condition by optical design, thereby improving its robustness to noise. It was shown that by using singular value decomposition, a target point-spread function (PSF) matrix can be defined for an auxiliary optical system, which works parallel to the original system to...

Simple optical imaging systems tend to suffer from a space variant (SV) blur and ill matrix condition and, thus, tend to amplify additive noise in the essential stage of image restoration. Previously, we showed that the matrix condition of systems with SV blur can be improved by adding a system-tailored parallel auxiliary system. We introduced such...

Space variant image restoration is often limited by the matrix condition of the optical system. We introduce a new approach to improve matrix condition, by designing a “Rim-ring” phase mask for parallel optics.

Imaging restoration is an essential step in hybrid optical and image processing system which relays on poor optics. The poor optics makes the blur ill-conditioned and turns the deblurring process difficult and unstable. Recently the idea of parallel optics (PO) was introduced. In the parallel optics setup the optical system is composed of a main sy...

We present preliminary experimental results of the “blurred trajectories” method. Results show improvement of the matrix condition and immunity to noise when using the proposed method.

The problem of image restoration of space variant blur is common and important. In many cases the restoration is limited by the optical system matrix condition. We present optical design for improving this figure

In many cases space variant (SV) image restoration is limited by the optical system matrix condition. We show how to improve this figure by the means of parallel optics for SV and space invariant cases.

The problem of image restoration of space variant blur is common and important. One of the most useful descriptions of this problem is in its algebraic form I=H*O, where O is the object represented as a column vector, I is the blur image represented as a column vector and H is the PSF matrix that represents the optical system. When inverting the pr...

An imaging device for use in an imaging system capable of improving the image quality. The imaging device has one or more optical systems defining an effective aperture of the imaging device. The imaging device comprises a lens system having an algebraic representation matrix of a diagonalized form defining a first Condition Number, and a phase enc...

When motion blur is considered, the optics point spread function (PSF) is conventionally assumed to be fixed, and therefore cascading of the motion optical transfer function (OTF) with the optics OTF is allowed. However, in angular motion conditions, the image is distorted by space-variant effects of wavefront aberrations, defocus, and motion blur....

A new model for the optical transfer function (OTF) of an imaging system during angular motion is presented. In the traditional analysis, the optic's point spread function (PSF) is assumed to be fixed and therefore, cascading the motion OTF with the optics' OTF is allowed. However, this method is found to be not accurate in the situation of varying...