The effectiveness of methods and algorithms for detecting and isolating factors that negatively affect the growth of crops

This article discusses a large number of textural features and integral transformations for the analysis of texture-type images. It also discusses the description and analysis of the features of applying existing methods for segmenting texture areas in images and determining the advantages and disadvantages of these methods and the problems that arise in the segmentation of texture areas in images. The purpose of the ongoing research is to use methods and determine the effectiveness of methods for the analysis of aerospace images, which are a combination of textural regions of natural origin and artificial objects. Currently, the automation of the processing of aerospace information, in particular images of the earth’s surface, remains an urgent task. The main goal is to develop models and methods for more efficient use of information technologies for the analysis of multispectral texture-type images in the developed algorithms. The article proposes a comprehensive approach to these issues, that is, the consideration of a large number of textural features by integral transformation to eventually create algorithms and programs applicable to solving a wide class of problems in agriculture.

Non-destructive monitoring of maize LAI by fusing UAV spectral and textural features

Leaf area index (LAI) is an essential indicator for crop growth monitoring and yield prediction. Real-time, non-destructive, and accurate monitoring of crop LAI is of great significance for intelligent decision-making on crop fertilization, irrigation, as well as for predicting and warning grain productivity. This study aims to investigate the feasibility of using spectral and texture features from unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) multispectral imagery combined with machine learning modeling methods to achieve maize LAI estimation. In this study, remote sensing monitoring of maize LAI was carried out based on a UAV high-throughput phenotyping platform using different varieties of maize as the research target. Firstly, the spectral parameters and texture features were extracted from the UAV multispectral images, and the Normalized Difference Texture Index (NDTI), Difference Texture Index (DTI) and Ratio Texture Index (RTI) were constructed by linear calculation of texture features. Then, the correlation between LAI and spectral parameters, texture features and texture indices were analyzed, and the image features with strong correlation were screened out. Finally, combined with machine learning method, LAI estimation models of different types of input variables were constructed, and the effect of image features combination on LAI estimation was evaluated. The results revealed that the vegetation indices based on the red (650 nm), red-edge (705 nm) and NIR (842 nm) bands had high correlation coefficients with LAI. The correlation between the linearly transformed texture features and LAI was significantly improved. Besides, machine learning models combining spectral and texture features have the best performance. Support Vector Machine (SVM) models of vegetation and texture indices are the best in terms of fit, stability and estimation accuracy (R2 = 0.813, RMSE = 0.297, RPD = 2.084). The results of this study were conducive to improving the efficiency of maize variety selection and provide some reference for UAV high-throughput phenotyping technology for fine crop management at the field plot scale. The results give evidence of the breeding efficiency of maize varieties and provide a certain reference for UAV high-throughput phenotypic technology in crop management at the field scale

A Review on Skin Disease Classification and Detection Using Deep Learning Techniques

Skin cancer ranks among the most dangerous cancers. Skin cancers are commonly referred to as Melanoma. Melanoma is brought on by genetic faults or mutations on the skin, which are caused by Unrepaired Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) in skin cells. It is essential to detect skin cancer in its infancy phase since it is more curable in its initial phases. Skin cancer typically progresses to other regions of the body. Owing to the disease's increased frequency, high mortality rate, and prohibitively high cost of medical treatments, early diagnosis of skin cancer signs is crucial. Due to the fact that how hazardous these disorders are, scholars have developed a number of early-detection techniques for melanoma. Lesion characteristics such as symmetry, colour, size, shape, and others are often utilised to detect skin cancer and distinguish benign skin cancer from melanoma. An in-depth investigation of deep learning techniques for melanoma's early detection is provided in this study. This study discusses the traditional feature extraction-based machine learning approaches for the segmentation and classification of skin lesions. Comparison-oriented research has been conducted to demonstrate the significance of various deep learning-based segmentation and classification approaches

Genetic Programming based Feature Manipulation for Skin Cancer Image Classification

Skin image classification involves the development of computational methods for solving problems such as cancer detection in lesion images, and their use for biomedical research and clinical care. Such methods aim at extracting relevant information or knowledge from skin images that can significantly assist in the early detection of disease. Skin images are enormous, and come with various artifacts that hinder effective feature extraction leading to inaccurate classification. Feature selection and feature construction can significantly reduce the amount of data while improving classification performance by selecting prominent features and constructing high-level features. Existing approaches mostly rely on expert intervention and follow multiple stages for pre-processing, feature extraction, and classification, which decreases the reliability, and increases the computational complexity. Since good generalization accuracy is not always the primary objective, clinicians are also interested in analyzing specific features such as pigment network, streaks, and blobs responsible for developing the disease; interpretable methods are favored. In Evolutionary Computation, Genetic Programming (GP) can automatically evolve an interpretable model and address the curse of dimensionality (through feature selection and construction). GP has been successfully applied to many areas, but its potential for feature selection, feature construction, and classification in skin images has not been thoroughly investigated. The overall goal of this thesis is to develop a new GP approach to skin image classification by utilizing GP to evolve programs that are capable of automatically selecting prominent image features, constructing new high level features, interpreting useful image features which can help dermatologist to diagnose a type of cancer, and are robust to processing skin images captured from specialized instruments and standard cameras. This thesis focuses on utilizing a wide range of texture, color, frequency-based, local, and global image properties at the terminal nodes of GP to classify skin cancer images from multiple modalities effectively. This thesis develops new two-stage GP methods using embedded and wrapper feature selection and construction approaches to automatically generating a feature vector of selected and constructed features for classification. The results show that wrapper approach outperforms the embedded approach, the existing baseline GP and other machine learning methods, but the embedded approach is faster than the wrapper approach. This thesis develops a multi-tree GP based embedded feature selection approach for melanoma detection using domain specific and domain independent features. It explores suitable crossover and mutation operators to evolve GP classifiers effectively and further extends this approach using a weighted fitness function. The results show that these multi-tree approaches outperformed single tree GP and other classification methods. They identify that a specific feature extraction method extracts most suitable features for particular images taken from a specific optical instrument. This thesis develops the first GP method utilizing frequency-based wavelet features, where the wrapper based feature selection and construction methods automatically evolve useful constructed features to improve the classification performance. The results show the evidence of successful feature construction by significantly outperforming existing GP approaches, state-of-the-art CNN, and other classification methods. This thesis develops a GP approach to multiple feature construction for ensemble learning in classification. The results show that the ensemble method outperformed existing GP approaches, state-of-the-art skin image classification, and commonly used ensemble methods. Further analysis of the evolved constructed features identified important image features that can potentially help the dermatologist identify further medical procedures in real-world situations

Fusion of structural and textural features for melanoma recognition

International audienceMelanoma is one the most increasing cancers since past decades. For accurate detection and classification, discriminative features are required to distinguish between benign and malignant cases. In this study, the authors introduce a fusion of structural and textural features from two descriptors. The structural features are extracted from wavelet and curvelet transforms, whereas the textural features are extracted from different variants of local binary pattern operator. The proposed method is implemented on 200 images from PH2 dermoscopy database including 160 non-melanoma and 40 melanoma images, where a rigorous statistical analysis for the database is performed. Using support vector machine (SVM) classifier with random sampling cross-validation method between the three cases of skin lesions given in the database, the validated results showed a very encouraging performance with a sensitivity of 78.93%, a specificity of 93.25% and an accuracy of 86.07%. The proposed approach outperforms the existing methods on the PH2 database