Detecting African hoofed animals in aerial imagery using convolutional neural network

In the past few years, automatic building detection in aerial images has become an emerging field in computer vision. Detecting the specific types of houses will provide information in urbanization, change detection, and urban monitoring that play increasingly important roles in modern city planning and natural hazard preparedness. In this paper, we demonstrate the effectiveness of detecting various types of houses in aerial imagery using Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster-RCNN). After formulating the dataset and extracting bounding-box information, pre-trained ResNet50 is used to get the feature maps. The fully convolutional Region Proposal Network (RPN) first predicts the bounds and objectness score of objects (in this case house) from the feature maps. Then, the Region of Interest (RoI) pooling layer extracts interested regions to detect objects that are present in the images. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at detecting houses using Faster R-CNN that has achieved satisfactory results. This experiment opens a new path to conduct and extent the works not only for civil and environmental domain but also other applied science disciplines.

The YOLOv8 model has high detection efficiency and classification accuracy in detecting commutator surface defects, aimed at the problem of low working efficiency of a commutator, caused by commutator surface defects. First, the theoretical framework of Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (R-CNN), spatial pyramid pooling (SPP)-net, Fast R-CNN, and Faster R-CNN is introduced, and the detection principle and process are described in detail. Secondly, the principle of the YOLOv8 network structure, head structure, neck structure, and C2f module are explained, and the loss function is described. The average precision of the proposed algorithm for detecting cracks and small points is more than 98%, and the frames per second (FPS) is 27. The detection results are mapped to the original image, and the visualization of the commutator surface defect detection is obtained, which has a higher robustness, accuracy, and real-time performance than the R-CNN, SPP-net, Fast R-CNN, and Faster R-CNN algorithms.

In the neck part of a two-stage object detection network, feature fusion is generally carried out in either a top-down or bottom-up manner. However, two types of imbalance may exist: feature imbalance in the neck of the model and gradient imbalance in the region of interest extraction layer due to the scale changes of objects. The deeper the network is, the more abstract the learned features are, that is to say, more semantic information can be extracted. However, the extracted image background, spatial location, and other resolution information are less. In contrast, the shallow part can learn little semantic information, but a lot of spatial location information. We propose the Both Ends to Centre to Multiple Layers (BEtM) feature fusion method to solve the feature imbalance problem in the neck and a Multi-level Region of Interest Feature Extraction (MRoIE) layer to solve the gradient imbalance problem. In combination with the Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) framework, our Balanced Feature Fusion (BFF) method offers significantly improved network performance compared with the Faster R-CNN architecture. On the MS COCO 2017 dataset, it achieves an average precision (AP) that is 1.9 points and 3.2 points higher than those of the Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) Faster R-CNN framework and the Generic Region of Interest Extractor (GRoIE) framework, respectively.

Existing segmentation and augmentation techniques on convolutional neural network (CNN) has produced remarkable progress in object detection. However, the nominal accuracy and performance might be downturned with the photometric variation of images that are directly ignored in the training process, along with the context of the individual CNN algorithm. In this paper, we investigate the effect of a photometric variation like brightness and sharpness on different CNN. We observe that random augmentation of images weakens the performance unless the augmentation combines the weak limits of photometric variation. Our approach has been justified by the experimental result obtained from the PASCAL VOC 2007 dataset, with object detection CNN algorithms such as YOLOv3 (You Only Look Once), Faster R-CNN (Region-based CNN), and SSD (Single Shot Multibox Detector). Each CNN model shows performance loss for varying sharpness and brightness, ranging between −80% to 80%. It was further shown that compared to random augmentation, the augmented dataset with weak photometric changes delivered high performance, but the photometric augmentation range differs for each model. Concurrently, we discuss some research questions that benefit the direction of the study. The results prove the importance of adaptive augmentation for individual CNN model, subjecting towards the robustness of object detection.

Wild birds are monitored with the important objectives of identifying their habitats and estimating the size of their populations. Especially in the case of migratory bird, they are significantly recorded during specific periods of time to forecast any possible spread of animal disease such as avian influenza. This study led to the construction of deep-learning-based object-detection models with the aid of aerial photographs collected by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The dataset containing the aerial photographs includes diverse images of birds in various bird habitats and in the vicinity of lakes and on farmland. In addition, aerial images of bird decoys are captured to achieve various bird patterns and more accurate bird information. Bird detection models such as Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN), Region-based Fully Convolutional Network (R-FCN), Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD), Retinanet, and You Only Look Once (YOLO) were created and the performance of all models was estimated by comparing their computing speed and average precision. The test results show Faster R-CNN to be the most accurate and YOLO to be the fastest among the models. The combined results demonstrate that the use of deep-learning-based detection methods in combination with UAV aerial imagery is fairly suitable for bird detection in various environments.

In potato (Solanum tuberosum) production, the number of tubers harvested and their sizes are related to the plant population. Field maps of the spatial variation in plant density can therefore provide a decision support tool for spatially variable harvest timing to optimize tuber sizes by allowing densely populated management zones more tuber-bulking time. Computer vision has been proposed to enumerate plant numbers using images from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) but inaccurate predictions in images of merged canopies remains a challenge. Some research has been done on individual potato plant bounding box prediction but there is currently no information on the spatial structure of plant density that these models may reveal and its relationship with potato yield quality attributes. In this study, the Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (FRCNN) framework was used to produce a plant detection model and estimate plant densities across a UAV orthomosaic. Using aerial images of 2 mm ground sampling distance (GSD) collected from potatoes at 40 days after planting, the FRCNN model was trained to an average precision (aP) of 0.78 on unseen testing data. The model was then used to generate predictions on quadrants imposed on orthorectified rasters captured at 14 and 18 days after emergence. After spatially interpolating the plant densities, the resultant surfaces were highly correlated to manually-determined plant density (R2 = 0.80). Further correlations were observed with tuber number (r = 0.54 at Butter Hill; r = 0.53 at Horse Foxhole), marketable tuber weight per plant (r = −0.57 at Buttery Hill; r = −0.56 at Horse Foxhole) and the normalized difference vegetation index (r = 0.61). These results show that accurate two-dimensional maps of plant density can be constructed from UAV imagery with high correlation to important yield components, despite the loss of accuracy of FRCNN models in partially merged canopies.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) has a significant impact on human life. The novel pandemic forced humans to change their lifestyles. Scientists have broken through the vaccine in many countries, but the face mask is the only protection for public interaction. In this study, deep neural networks (DNN) have been employed to determine the persons wearing masks correctly. The faster region‐based convolutional neural networks (RCNN) model has been used to train the data using graphics processing unit (GPU) device. To achieve our goals, we used a multiphase detection model: first, to label the face mask, and second to detect the edge and compute edge projection for the chosen face region within the face mask. The current findings revealed that faster RCNN was efficient and precise, giving 97% accuracy. The overall loss after 200,000 epochs is 0.0503, with a trend to decrease. While the loss is falling, we are getting more accurate results. As a result, the faster RCNN technique effectively identifies whether a person is wearing face masks or not, and the training period was decreased with better accuracy. In the future, Deep Neural Network (DNN) might be used first to train the data and then compress the dimensions of the input to run it on low‐powered devices, resulting in a lower computational cost. Our proposed system can achieve high face detection accuracy and coarsely obtain face posture estimation based on the specified rule. The faster RCNN learning algorithm returns high precision, and the model’s lower computational cost is achieved on GPU. We use the “label‐image” application to label the photographs extracted from the dataset and apply Inception V2 of faster RCNN for face mask detection and classification.

Recent development in object detection are greatly driven by the success of region proposal approaches and region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNNs). In this paper, we designed and implemented an object detection system using a faster-CNN method that shares full-image convolutional features with a detection network, so as to enable nearly cost-free region proposals. Development of this system is based on the previous work on Faster R-CNN. Results shows that with this method, we could achieve high accuracy while detecting objects.

Modern people who value healthy eating habits have shown increasing interest in plum (Prunus mume) fruits, primarily owing to their nutritiousness and proven efficacy. As consumption increases, it becomes important to monitor work to prevent Prunus mume fruits from falling out. Moreover, determining the growth status of Prunus mume is also crucial and is attracting increasing attention. In this study, convolutional neural network (CNN)-based deep learning object detection was developed using RGBD images collected from Prunus mume farms. These RGBD images consider various environments, including the depth information of objects in the outdoor field. A faster region-based convolutional neural network (R-CNN), EfficientDet, Retinanet, and Single Shot Multibox Detector (SSD) were applied for detection, and the performance of all models was estimated by comparing their respective computing speeds and average precisions (APs). The test results show that the EfficientDet model is the most accurate, and SSD MobileNet is the fastest among the four models. In addition, the algorithm was developed to acquire the growth status of P. mume fruits by applying the coordinates and score values of bounding boxes to the depth map. Compared to the diameters of the artificial Prunus mume fruits used as the experimental group, the calculated diameters were very similar to those of the artificial objects. Collectively, the results demonstrate that the CNN-based deep learning Prunus mume detection and growth estimation method can be applied to real farmlands.

Algorithms based on deep learning are taking off as solutions to several problems in numerous fields. Numerous deep learning architectures like convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, deep belief networks, artificial neural networks and deep neural networks have been used in fields such as audio recognition, machine vision, processing of natural language, recognition of speech, social network filtering, computer vision, translating languages and bioinformatics. One such application of deep learning architectures is object detection. Object detection in satellite and aerial imagery undertakes an important role in a long list of applications and has allured a lot of attention which resulted in exceptional progress in recent years. It has abundant uses in various fields such as surveillance, military, national security, urban planning, environmental applications, traffic control and forestry. Several issues like varying size, background and orientation of the target object make the automatic detection of target in satellite imagery a challenging issue. Recent research in this field has given better speed and accuracy to the detection of the target object. With the rise in the data being generated by the Earth Observation programs, it is becoming much more imperative to find better and efficient ways to exploit this data by improving upon the existing Deep Learning research. In this paper, we bring forth a wide-ranging analysis of the recent advancements in methods of object detection based on deep learning to recognize the objects in satellite imagery.KeywordsDeep learningObject detectionSatellite imageryRemote sensingYou Only Look Once (YOLO)You Only Look Twice (YOLT)Single Shot Detector (SSD)Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN)Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (Faster RCNN)Hybrid Deep Convolutional Neural Network (HDNN)Satellite Imagery Multiscale Rapid Detection with Windowed Networks (SIMRDWN)

Distinguishing between primary clear cell carcinoma of the liver (PCCCL) and common hepatocellular carcinoma (CHCC) through traditional inspection methods before the operation is difficult. This study aimed to establish a Faster region-based convolutional neural network (RCNN) model for the accurate differential diagnosis of PCCCL and CHCC. In this study, we collected the data of 62 patients with PCCCL and 1079 patients with CHCC in Beijing YouAn Hospital from June 2012 to May 2020. A total of 109 patients with CHCC and 42 patients with PCCCL were randomly divided into the training validation set and the test set in a ratio of 4:1.The Faster RCNN was used for deep learning of patients' data in the training validation set, and established a convolutional neural network model to distinguish PCCCL and CHCC. The accuracy, average precision, and the recall of the model for diagnosing PCCCL and CHCC were used to evaluate the detection performance of the Faster RCNN algorithm. A total of 4392 images of 121 patients (1032 images of 33 patients with PCCCL and 3360 images of 88 patients with CHCC) were uesd in test set for deep learning and establishing the model, and 1072 images of 30 patients (320 images of nine patients with PCCCL and 752 images of 21 patients with CHCC) were used to test the model. The accuracy of the model for accurately diagnosing PCCCL and CHCC was 0.962 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.931-0.992). The average precision of the model for diagnosing PCCCL was 0.908 (95% CI: 0.823-0.993) and that for diagnosing CHCC was 0.907 (95% CI: 0.823-0.993). The recall of the model for diagnosing PCCCL was 0.951 (95% CI: 0.916-0.985) and that for diagnosing CHCC was 0.960 (95% CI: 0.854-0.962). The time to make a diagnosis using the model took an average of 4 s for each patient. The Faster RCNN model can accurately distinguish PCCCL and CHCC. This model could be important for clinicians to make appropriate treatment plans for patients with PCCCL or CHCC.

The localization of multiple interference sources in Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) can be achieved using carrier-to-noise ratio (C/N0) information provided by GNSS receivers, such as those embedded in smartphones. However, in increasingly prevalent complex scenarios—such as the coexistence of multiple directional interferences, increased diversity and density of GNSS interference, and the presence of multiple low-power interference sources—conventional localization methods often fail to provide reliable results, thereby limiting their applicability in real-world environments. This paper presents a multi-interference sources localization method using object detection in GNSS C/N0 distribution maps. The proposed method first exploits the similarity between C/N0 data reported by GNSS receivers and image grayscale values to construct C/N0 distribution maps, thereby transforming the problem of multi-source GNSS interference localization into an object detection and localization task based on image processing techniques. Subsequently, an Oriented Squeeze-and-Excitation-based Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (OSF-RCNN) framework is proposed to process the C/N0 distribution maps. Building upon the Faster R-CNN framework, the proposed method integrates an Oriented RPN (Region Proposal Network) to regress the orientation angles of directional antennas, effectively addressing their rotational characteristics. Additionally, the Squeeze-and-Excitation (SE) mechanism and the Feature Pyramid Network (FPN) are integrated at key stages of the network to improve sensitivity to small targets, thereby enhancing detection and localization performance for low-power interference sources. The simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed method in accurately localizing multiple interference sources under the increasingly prevalent complex scenarios described above.

The automation of agricultural practices offers significant potential for boosting productivity while reducing labor requirements, particularly in fruit harvesting. However, accurately detecting tomatoes in dynamic and complex field environments remains a challenge due to issues such as high false positive rates, missed detections, variable illumination, occlusion, and heterogeneous foliage. In this research, tomato recognition for autonomous picking robots is conducted using the deep learning model Faster R-CNN (Region-based Convolutional Neural Network). Faster R-CNN excels in object detection tasks within complex scenes containing multiple objects and diverse backgrounds by generating region proposals and performing classifications, thereby addressing these challenges effectively. The Faster R-CNN model is trained and optimized on a comprehensive dataset of tomato plants collected under diverse field conditions for real-time detection. To enhance robustness and reliability in challenging environments, sensor fusion techniques integrating RGB and depth information are employed. This approach is expected to significantly reduce false positives and missed detections, improving the overall efficiency of autonomous picking robots. The proposed solution not only addresses critical inefficiencies in the tomato harvesting process but also advances the application of deep learning models in precision agriculture, promoting sustainable and efficient farming practices.

Abstract. Deep learning (DL) algorithms are widely used in object detection such as roads, vehicles, buildings, etc., in aerial images. However, the object detection task is still considered challenging for detecting complex structures, oil pads are one such example: due to its shape, orientation, and background reflection. A recent study used Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (FR-CNN) to detect a single oil pad from the center of the image of size 256 × 256. However, for real-time applications, it is necessary to detect multiple oil pads from aerial images irrespective of their orientation. In this study, FR-CNN was trained to detect multiple oil pads. We cropped images from high spatial resolution images to train the model containing multiple oil pads. The network was trained for 100 epochs using 164 training images and tested with 50 images under 3 different categories. with images containing: single oil pad, multiple oil pad and no oil pad. The model performance was evaluated using standard metrics: precision, recall, F1-score. The final model trained for multiple oil pad detection achieved a weighted average for 50 images precision of 0.67, recall of 0.80, and f1 score of 0.73. The 0.80 recall score indicates that 80% of the oil pads were able to identify from the given test set. The presence of instances in test images like cleared areas, rock structures, and sand patterns having high visual similarity with the target resulted in a low precision score.

In the last couple of years, advancements in the deep learning, especially in convolutional neural networks, proved to be a boon for the image classification and recognition tasks. One of the important practical applications of object detection and image classification can be for security enhancement. If dangerous objects or scenes can be identified automatically, then a lot of accidents can be prevented. For this purpose, in this paper we made use of state-of-the-art implementation of Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (Faster R-CNN) based on the monitoring video of hoisting sites to train a model to detect the dangerous object and the worker. By extracting the locations of them, object-human interactions during hoisting, mainly for changes in their spatial location relationship, can be understood whereby estimating whether the scene is safe or dangerous. Experimental results showed that the pre-trained model achieved good performance with a high mean average precision of 97.66% on object detection and the proposed method fulfilled the goal of dangerous scenes recognition perfectly.