Photoshop Software Application in the Identification Research on the Medicinal Materials from Sabia

OBJECTIVE To explore the feasibility and significance of this method to identify stem and wood medicinal materials by using Photoshop CS3 software to deal with the image information of the medicinal plants of Sabia and their adulterants, and combining the method of statistical analysis to identify the medicinal materials. METHODS The observation and analysis of transverse section characteristics of stem from 6 Sabia medicinal plants and its adulterants were conducted. In addition, shooting, measurement and statistical analysis of the characteristics of the stem transverse section were also implemented based on the application of digital photography, Photoshop CS3 software and SPSS 22.0 software. RESULTS There were some differences in the ratio of the pith/wood and the number of medullary rays in the stem transverse section of the 6 studied plants. CONCLUSION The methodology combining Photoshop software image processing and statistical analysis can be used as a new reference for phytotaxonomy and properties identification of Sabia medicinal materials.