Spectral Reflectances Of Log Ends For Camera Based Annual Ring Width Measurments

The wood quality measurement methods are of increasing importance in the wood industry. One of the main goals of the wood industry is to produce new high quality products with higher marketing value. The wood strength and stiffness are significant factors considering wooden products. These factors are related to the wood species, to the number and type of knots and to the mean annual ring width and its deviation to name a few. The logs can be measured and imaged in the forest machinery and thus the measurement based decisions can be made as early as possible on the production chain. This paper focuses on an aspect of the annual ring width estimation from the images taken in forest machinery. The focus is on the spectral reflectance of the log ends for optimal annual ring visibility. The average spectral reflectance of the log end does not indicate how well the annual rings are visible. Therefore a more sophisticated analysis of the annual ring visibility is performed to four tree species based on the two-dimensional spatial spectral analysis.