Patent ID: 8135178

Claim:
A method of processing image data on vegetation in an agricultural field, the method comprising: identifying image data relating to an agricultural field representative of areas of predetermined development patterns of vegetation in the field, the predetermined development patterns comprising a higher vegetation area of weedy patches; segregating said areas of the predetermined development patterns with said weedy patches thereby defining segregated areas by overlaying a Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) with a color infrared layer to select pixels with a geometric pattern or spatial distribution indicative of the weedy patches, other areas in the field being non-segregated areas; normalizing said image data within said non-segregated area using a best crop area as a reference crop area that has sufficient nitrogen to identify a reference pixel within the reference crop area such that the other pixel data in the non-segregated crop area has normalized pixel values with reference to the reference pixel; and prescribing application rates of an agricultural compound to said non-segregated areas dependent on a crop canopy color determined from said normalized image data based on the NDVI.