To monitor plant health, typically the plant chlorophyll concentration is measured. Currently, this involves chemical extraction, which is destructive, complex, and time-consuming.

Aydogan Ozcan and colleagues, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, have developed an accurate and non-destructive method to measure chlorophyll concentration in plant leaves. They combined the wearable technology of Google Glass, a custom-developed software, a cost-effective leaf holder, and a portable multi-spectral illuminator device.

The glasses take two images of a leaf, which is placed in the illuminator device and illuminated with either red or white light-emitting diodes. For remote digital processing and chlorophyll quantification, the images are uploaded to a server. Within less than ten seconds, the results return to the user’s display. Additionally, Google Glass can provide GPS information of the measurement. The team has demonstrated accurate and rapid estimation of chlorophyll concentration of fifteen different plant species under both indoor and outdoor lighting conditions.

• Quantification of plant chlorophyll content using Google Glass,
  Bingen Cortazar, Hatice Ceylan Koydemir, Derek Tseng, Steve Feng, Aydogan Ozcan,
  Lab Chip 2015.
  DOI: 10.1039/c4lc01279h