TRAS: An Interactive Software for Tracing Tree Ring Cross Sections
2026-05-08 • Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
AI summaryⓘ
The authors created TRAS, a free software tool to help automatically find and measure tree rings in images of wood slices. It uses three detection methods, including deep learning, to identify rings, and lets users fix mistakes easily. Tested on pine tree images, one deep learning method worked best and cut manual work by about 80%. TRAS also calculates important tree growth measurements and works on multiple computer systems. The software aims to make tree-ring studies faster, less subjective, and easier to manage for big datasets.
DendrometryDendrochronologyTree ringsImage processingDeep learningRing-width measurementEarlywoodLatewoodPinus taedaF-score
Authors
Henry Marichal, Diego Passarella, Gregory Randall
Abstract
Tree ring marking remains a key step in dendrometry and dendrochronology, but it is often performed manually, making the process time-consuming, subjective, and difficult to scale to large image datasets. We present the Tree Ring Analyzer Suite (TRAS), an open-source graphical software for automatic delineation, manual correction, and measurement of tree rings in wood cross-sectional images. TRAS integrates three complementary detection algorithms: the classical image-processing method CS-TRD and two deep-learning approaches, DeepCS-TRD and INBD. The interface allows users to refine automatic detections, remove false positives, and manually add missing rings. It also computes dendrochronological metrics such as earlywood and latewood areas, ring perimeter, equivalent ring width, and custom path-based ring-width measurements. TRAS was evaluated on 18 expertly annotated Pinus taeda L. cross-section images. DeepCS-TRD achieved the best automatic detection performance, with an F-score of 81.0% and precision of 86.4%. Automatic detection reduced the required manual correction effort to approximately 20% of ring boundaries. For one-dimensional ring-width measurements, TRAS showed excellent agreement with CooRecorder ($r > 0.99$). Common detection errors, such as jump propagation or false positives near knots, were easily corrected through the postprocessing interface. TRAS provides a flexible and reproducible solution for tree-ring analysis on Windows, macOS, and Linux. Code is available at the https://hmarichal93.github.io/tras.