Visualization Methods of 3D Plant Models: A Systematic Mapping Study

Abstract

Three-dimensional plant model visualization (3D-PMV) is based on plant biology and the plant structure construction model for virtual simulation three-dimensional display, reflecting plant structure characteristics and demonstrating the growth process. In this work, we used the method of systematic mapping study (SMS) to screen the relevant literature in order to explore and analyze the methods and goals of virtual plant visualization research and to provide assistance in future literature reviews. To this end, we conducted extensive searches to identify articles related to plant model visualization technology. We searched for papers from July 2010 to November 2020 from four mainstream databases, namely, ACM, IEEE Xplore, EI, and Web of Science, and found more than 2,900 papers on 3D-PMV. Finally, we selected 60 qualified papers. We mainly followed the SMS method to classify papers by answering seven questions, mainly extracting data for analysis on research types, research goals, model construction methods, visual model categories, number of publications, tools, and methods. The results show that solution proposals account for the largest proportion of research types, accounting for 75% of the total number of papers. This shows that the focus is on the improvement of original methods or the proposal of new methods in this field; research goals of research plant phenotypic characteristics account for the total 35%; 28% of the research objectives focus on showing the reflection of plant growth process, indicating that the research objective trends in this research field regard plant phenotypic characteristics and visualization of the growth process; static type model visualization also accounts for 83% of the total, indicating that the related research on visualization in this field is mostly static typing. Therefore, our work not only analyzes the challenges faced by 3D-PVM and the research directions that need more attention in the future but also provides some suggestions for researchers to find suitable research directions in this field. As the future direction of development, researchers need to pay more attention to the study of dynamic visualization methods of plant growth. We believe that for future research, it is indispensable to provide 3D-PMV with research methods, research goals, visualization model types, development, and other tools. This article analyzes the results of the extracted data based on the SMS method and makes an important contribution to the researcher's extensive understanding of the current status of 3D-PMV and the potential future research opportunities in the field.