Estimating Cabbage Production in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia Using IKONOS Data

The objective of the study is to map and count the individual cabbages at the early growth stage in Sg. Palas, Cameron Highland grown under a mix cropping system and estimate its production. With ground verification, an IKONOS 4 m multispectral imagery acquired on 25 February 2001 was digitally processed at an orthorectified level. A Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was developed and a scanned topographical map was overlaid with IKONOS data to precisely locate the attribute data and map the individual young growing cabbages. Using a supervised and unsupervised classification, less than and above 1.5 month-old cabbages were mapped and quantified. The algorithm and processing technique developed in this study can easily estimate a production of 25,000 cabbages/ha in Sg Palas area. Integrating the data with a Geographic Information System (GIS) may help Cameron Highland farmers to better market their cabbages in the future. The potential use of airborne hyperspectral imaging data such as UPM-TropAIR’s AISA TropAIRMAPTM to map and predict the supply of cabbages should be the next step in precision farming revolution using remote sensing. Keywords: Cabbage; Production; Market intelligence; High resolution; Satellite remote sensin

Estimating Cabbage Production in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia Using IKONOS Data

The objective of the study is to map and count the individual cabbages at the early growth stage in Sg. Palas, Cameron Highland grown under a mix cropping system and estimate its production. With ground verification, an IKONOS 4 m multispectral imagery acquired on 25 February 2001 was digitally processed at an orthorectified level. A Digital Terrain Model (DTM) was developed and a scanned topographical map was overlaid with IKONOS data to precisely locate the attribute data and map the individual young growing cabbages. Using a supervised and unsupervised classification, less than and above 1.5 month-old cabbages were mapped and quantified. The algorithm and processing technique developed in this study can easily estimate a production of 25,000 cabbages/ha in Sg Palas area. Integrating the data with a Geographic Information System (GIS) may help Cameron Highland farmers to better market their cabbages in the future. The potential use of airborne hyperspectral imaging data such as UPM-TropAIR’s AISA TropAIRMAPTM to map and predict the supply of cabbages should be the next step in precision farming revolution using remote sensing. Keywords: Cabbage; Production; Market intelligence; High resolution; Satellite remote sensin

Direction Selective Contour Detection for Salient Objects

The active contour model is a widely used technique for automatic object contour extraction. Existing methods based on this model can perform with high accuracy even in case of complex contours, but challenging issues remain, like the need for precise contour initialization for high curvature boundary segments or the handling of cluttered backgrounds. To deal with such issues, this paper presents a salient object extraction method, the first step of which is the introduction of an improved edge map that incorporates edge direction as a feature. The direction information in the small neighborhoods of image feature points are extracted, and the images’ prominent orientations are defined for direction-selective edge extraction. Using such improved edge information, we provide a highly accurate shape contour representation, which we also combine with texture features. The principle of the paper is to interpret an object as the fusion of its components: its extracted contour and its inner texture. Our goal in fusing textural and structural information is twofold: it is applied for automatic contour initialization, and it is also used to establish an improved external force field. This fusion then produces highly accurate salient object extractions. We performed extensive evaluations which confirm that the presented object extraction method outperforms parametric active contour models and achieves higher efficiency than the majority of the evaluated automatic saliency methods

Machine Learning towards General Medical Image Segmentation

The quality of patient care associated with diagnostic radiology is proportionate to a physician\u27s workload. Segmentation is a fundamental limiting precursor to diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Advances in machine learning aims to increase diagnostic efficiency to replace single applications with generalized algorithms. We approached segmentation as a multitask shape regression problem, simultaneously predicting coordinates on an object\u27s contour while jointly capturing global shape information. Shape regression models inherent point correlations to recover ambiguous boundaries not supported by clear edges and region homogeneity. Its capabilities was investigated using multi-output support vector regression (MSVR) on head and neck (HaN) CT images. Subsequently, we incorporated multiplane and multimodality spinal images and presented the first deep learning multiapplication framework for shape regression, the holistic multitask regression network (HMR-Net). MSVR and HMR-Net\u27s performance were comparable or superior to state-of-the-art algorithms. Multiapplication frameworks bridges any technical knowledge gaps and increases workflow efficiency

Delineation of Surface Water Features Using RADARSAT-2 Imagery and a TOPAZ Masking Approach over the Prairie Pothole Region in Canada

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) is one of the most rapidly changing environments in the world. In the PPR of North America, topographic depressions are common, and they are an essential water storage element in the regional hydrological system. The accurate delineation of surface water bodies is important for a variety of reasons, including conservation, environmental management, and better understanding of hydrological and climate modeling. There are numerous surface water bodies across the northern Prairie Region, making it challenging to provide near-real-time monitoring and in situ measurements of the spatial and temporal variation in the surface water area. Satellite remote sensing is the only practical approach to delineating the surface water area of Prairie potholes on an ongoing and cost-effective basis. Optical satellite imagery is able to detect surface water but only under cloud-free conditions, a substantial limitation for operational monitoring of surface water variability. However, as an active sensor, RADARSAT-2 (RS-2) has the ability to provide data for surface water detection that can overcome the limitation of optical sensors. In this research, a threshold-based procedure was developed using Fine Wide (F0W3), Wide (W2) and Standard (S3) modes to delineate the extent of surface water areas in the St. Denis and Smith Creek study basins, Saskatchewan, Canada. RS-2 thresholding results yielded a higher number of apparent water surfaces than were visible in high-resolution optical imagery (SPOT) of comparable resolution acquired at nearly the same time. TOPAZ software was used to determine the maximum possible extent of water ponding on the surface by analyzing high-resolution LiDAR-based DEM data. Removing water bodies outside the depressions mapped by TOPAZ improved the resulting images, which corresponded more closely to the SPOT surface water images. The results demonstrate the potential of TOPAZ masking for RS-2 surface water mapping used for operational purposes

Assessment of high resolution SAR imagery for mapping floodplain water bodies: a comparison between Radarsat-2 and TerraSAR-X

Flooding is a world-wide problem that is considered as one of the most devastating natural hazards. New commercially available high spatial resolution Synthetic Aperture RADAR satellite imagery provides new potential for flood mapping. This research provides a quantitative assessment of high spatial resolution RADASAT-2 and TerraSAR-X products for mapping water bodies in order to help validate products that can be used to assist flood disaster management. An area near Dhaka in Bangladesh is used as a test site because of the large number of water bodies of different sizes and its history of frequent flooding associated with annual monsoon rainfall. Sample water bodies were delineated in the field using kinematic differential GPS to train and test automatic methods for water body mapping. SAR sensors products were acquired concurrently with the field visits; imagery were acquired with similar polarization, look direction and incidence angle in an experimental design to evaluate which has best accuracy for mapping flood water extent. A methodology for mapping water areas from non-water areas was developed based on radar backscatter texture analysis. Texture filters, based on Haralick occurrence and co-occurrence measures, were compared and images classified using supervised, unsupervised and contextual classifiers. The evaluation of image products is based on an accuracy assessment of error matrix method using randomly selected ground truth data. An accuracy comparison was performed between classified images of both TerraSAR-X and Radarsat-2 sensors in order to identify any differences in mapping floods. Results were validated using information from field inspections conducted in good conditions in February 2009, and applying a model-assisted difference estimator for estimating flood area to derive Confidence Interval (CI) statistics at the 95% Confidence Level (CL) for the area mapped as water. For Radarsat-2 Ultrafine, TerraSAR-X Stripmap and Spotlight imagery, overall classification accuracy was greater than 93%. Results demonstrate that small water bodies down to areas as small as 150m² can be identified routinely from 3 metre resolution SAR imagery. The results further showed that TerraSAR-X stripmap and spotlight images have better overall accuracy than RADARSAT-2 ultrafine beam modes images. The expected benefits of the research will be to improve the provision of data to assess flood risk and vulnerability, thus assisting in disaster management and post-flood recovery

An automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI images based on the modified grey level co-occurrence matrix

The development of an automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI scans remains challenging due to high variability and complexity of the brain tumours. Visual examination of MRI scans to diagnose brain tumours is the accepted standard. However due to the large number of MRI slices that are produced for each patient this is becoming a time consuming and slow process that is also prone to errors. This study explores an automated system for the classification and segmentation of brain tumours in MRI scans based on texture feature extraction. The research investigates an appropriate technique for feature extraction and development of a three-dimensional segmentation method. This was achieved by the investigation and integration of several image processing methods that are related to texture features and segmentation of MRI brain scans. First, the MRI brain scans were pre-processed by image enhancement, intensity normalization, background segmentation and correcting the mid-sagittal plane (MSP) of the brain for any possible skewness in the patient’s head. Second, the texture features were extracted using modified grey level co-occurrence matrix (MGLCM) from T2-weighted (T2-w) MRI slices and classified into normal and abnormal using multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLP). The texture feature extraction method starts from the standpoint that the human brain structure is approximately symmetric around the MSP of the brain. The extracted features measure the degree of symmetry between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, which are used to detect the abnormalities in the brain. This will enable clinicians to reject the MRI brain scans of the patients who have normal brain quickly and focusing on those who have pathological brain features. Finally, the bounding 3D-boxes based genetic algorithm (BBBGA) was used to identify the location of the brain tumour and segments it automatically by using three-dimensional active contour without edge (3DACWE) method. The research was validated using two datasets; a real dataset that was collected from the MRI Unit in Al-Kadhimiya Teaching Hospital in Iraq in 2014 and the standard benchmark multimodal brain tumour segmentation (BRATS 2013) dataset. The experimental results on both datasets proved that the efficacy of the proposed system in the successful classification and segmentation of the brain tumours in MRI scans. The achieved classification accuracies were 97.8% for the collected dataset and 98.6% for the standard dataset. While the segmentation’s Dice scores were 89% for the collected dataset and 89.3% for the standard dataset