Development of Hybrid Automatic Segmentation Technique of a Single Leaf from Overlapping Leaves Image

The segmentation of a single leaf from an image with overlapping leaves is an important step towards the realization of effective precision agricultural systems. A popular approach used for this segmentation task is the hybridization of the Chan-Vese model and the Sobel operator CV-SO. This hybridized approach is popular because of its simplicity and effectiveness in segmenting a single leaf of interest from a complex background of overlapping leaves. However, the manual threshold and parameter tuning procedure of the CV-SO algorithm often degrades its detection performance. In this paper, we address this problem by introducing a dynamic iterative model to determine the optimal parameters for the CV-SO algorithm, which we dubbed the Dynamic CV-SO (DCV-SO) algorithm. This is a new hybrid automatic segmentation technique that attempts to improve the detection performance of the original hybrid CV-SO algorithm by reducing its mean error rate. The results obtained via simulation indicate that the proposed method yielded a 1.23% reduction in the mean error rate against the original CV-SO method

Clasificación del fruto del durazno en maduros, no maduros y dañados hacia la cosecha automatizada

A partir de la tecnología de visión artificial, específicamente de redes neuronales convolucionales, se propuso una solución para realizar el reconocimiento de frutos de durazno maduros, así como la identificación de frutos dañados. La finalidad es obtener frutos con el nivel de calidad adecuado para su comercialización. Para lograr este propósito, se obtuvieron imágenes de duraznos en un ambiente no controlado. Se recortaron las imágenes digitales hasta obtener el ?rea de interés. Se configuraron tres conjuntos de datos: el primero, de duraznos maduros e inmaduros; el segundo, también de duraznos maduros e inmaduros pero con enfoque en un ?rea textural, y el tercero, de duraznos sanos y da?ados. Se aplicó una red neuronal convolucional, que fue programada en el lenguaje Python, las librerías de Keras y TensorFlow. Durante las pruebas se obtuvo una precisión de 95.31 % a la hora de elegir entre maduros y no maduros. Mientras que al clasificar los duraznos sanos y dañados se obtuvo 92.18 % de precisión. Por último, al clasificar las tres categorías (dañados, inmaduros y maduros), se obtuvo 83.33 % de precisión. Los resultados anteriores indican que con inteligencia artificial embebida en un dispositivo físico se puede hacer la clasificación del fruto del durazno

A New Convolutional Neural Network Architecture for Automatic Segmentation of Overlapping Human Chromosomes

In clinical diagnosis, karyotyping is carried out to detect genetic disorders due to chromosomal aberrations. Accurate segmentation is crucial in this process that is mostly operated by experts. However, it is time-consuming and labor-intense to segment chromosomes and their overlapping regions. In this research, we look into the automatic segmentation of overlapping pairs of chromosomes. Different from standard semantic segmentation applications that mostly detect object regions or boundaries, this study attempts to predict not only non-overlapping regions but also the order of superposition and opaque regions of the underlying chromosomes. We propose a novel convolutional neural network called Compact Seg-UNet with enhanced deep feature learning capability and training efficacy. To address the issue of unrealistic images in use characterized by overlapping regions of higher color intensities, we propose a novel method to generate more realistic images with opaque overlapping regions. On the segmentation performance of overlapping chromosomes for this new dataset, our Compact Seg-UNet model achieves an average IOU score of 93.44% ± 0.26 which is significantly higher than the result of a simplified U-Net reported by literature by around 6.08%. The corresponding F1 score also increases from 0.9262 ± 0.1188 to 0.9596 ± 0.0814

Machine learning methods for automatic segmentation of images of field-and glasshouse-based plants for high-throughput phenotyping

Image segmentation is a fundamental but critical step for achieving automated high- throughput phenotyping. While conventional segmentation methods perform well in homogenous environments, the performance decreases when used in more complex environments. This study aimed to develop a fast and robust neural-network-based segmentation tool to phenotype plants in both field and glasshouse environments in a high-throughput manner. Digital images of cowpea (from glasshouse) and wheat (from field) with different nutrient supplies across their full growth cycle were acquired. Image patches from 20 randomly selected images from the acquired dataset were transformed from their original RGB format to multiple color spaces. The pixels in the patches were annotated as foreground and background with a pixel having a feature vector of 24 color properties. A feature selection technique was applied to choose the sensitive features, which were used to train a multilayer perceptron network (MLP) and two other traditional machine learning models: support vector machines (SVMs) and random forest (RF). The performance of these models, together with two standard color-index segmentation techniques (excess green (ExG) and excess green–red (ExGR)), was compared. The proposed method outperformed the other methods in producing quality segmented images with over 98%-pixel classification accuracy. Regression models developed from the different segmentation methods to predict Soil Plant Analysis Development (SPAD) values of cowpea and wheat showed that images from the proposed MLP method produced models with high predictive power and accuracy comparably. This method will be an essential tool for the development of a data analysis pipeline for high-throughput plant phenotyping. The proposed technique is capable of learning from different environmental conditions, with a high level of robustness