This paper presents a method for the prediction of NO_x emissions in a biomass combustion process through the combination of flame radical imaging, contourlet transform and Zernike moment (CTZM), and least squares support vector regression (LS-SVR) modeling. A novel feature extraction technique based on the CTZM algorithm is developed. The contourlet transform provides the multiscale decomposition for flame radical images and the selected operator based on Zernike moments is designed to provide the well-defined structure for the images. The resulted image features are a variable structure, which is originated from the CTZM. Finally, the variable features of the images of four flame radicals (OH*, CN*, CH*, and C*₂) are defined. The relationship between the variable features of radical images and NO_x emissions is established through radial basis function network modeling, SVR modeling, and the LS-SVR modeling. A comparison between the three modeling approaches shows that the LS-SVR model outperforms the other two methods in terms of root-mean-square error and mean relative error criteria. In addition, the structure of the image features has a significant impact on the performance of the prediction models. The test results obtained on a biomass-gas fired test rig show the effectiveness of the proposed technical approach for the prediction of NO_x emissions.