Performance Analysis of Pre-Processing techniques in Plantain Tree Disease Classification with Convolutional Neural Network

Most Facial Expression Recognition (FER) systems rely on machine learning approaches that require large databases for an effective training. As these are not easily available, a good solution is to augment the databases with appropriate data augmentation (DA) techniques, which are typically based on either geometric transformation or oversampling augmentations (e.g., generative adversarial networks (GANs)). However, it is not always easy to understand which DA technique may be more convenient for FER systems because most state-of-the-art experiments use different settings which makes the impact of DA techniques not comparable. To advance in this respect, in this paper, we evaluate and compare the impact of using well-established DA techniques on the emotion recognition accuracy of a FER system based on the well-known VGG16 convolutional neural network (CNN). In particular, we consider both geometric transformations and GAN to increase the amount of training images. We performed cross-database evaluations: training with the "augmented" KDEF database and testing with two different databases (CK+ and ExpW). The best results were obtained combining horizontal reflection, translation and GAN, bringing an accuracy increase of approximately 30%. This outperforms alternative approaches, except for the one technique that could however rely on a quite bigger database.

Eye-tracking technology enables communication for individuals with muscle control difficulties, making it a valuable assistive tool. Traditional systems rely on electrooculography (EOG) or infrared devices, which are accurate but costly and invasive. While vision-based systems offer a more accessible alternative, they have not been extensively explored for eye-writing recognition. Additionally, the natural instability of eye movements and variations in writing styles result in inconsistent signal lengths, which reduces recognition accuracy and limits the practical use of eye-writing systems. To address these challenges, we propose a novel vision-based eye-writing recognition approach that utilizes a webcam-captured dataset. A key contribution of our approach is the introduction of a Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT)-based length normalization method that standardizes the length of each eye-writing sample while preserving essential spectral characteristics. This ensures uniformity in input lengths and improves both efficiency and robustness. Moreover, we integrate a hybrid deep learning model that combines 1D Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Temporal Convolutional Networks (TCN) to jointly capture spatial and temporal features of eye-writing. To further improve model robustness, we incorporate data augmentation and initial-point normalization techniques. The proposed system was evaluated using our new webcam-captured Arabic numbers dataset and two existing benchmark datasets, with leave-one-subject-out (LOSO) cross-validation. The model achieved accuracies of 97.68% on the new dataset, 94.48% on the Japanese Katakana dataset, and 98.70% on the EOG-captured Arabic numbers dataset—outperforming existing systems. This work provides an efficient eye-writing recognition system, featuring robust preprocessing techniques, a hybrid deep learning model, and a new webcam-captured dataset.

Purpose Diagnosing the crop diseases by farmers accurately with the naked eye can be challenging. Timely identification and treating these diseases is crucial to prevent complete destruction of the crops. To overcome these challenges, in this work a light-weight automatic crop disease detection system has been developed, which uses novel combination of residual network (ResNet)-based feature extractor and machine learning algorithm based classifier over a real-time crop dataset. Design/methodology/approach The proposed system is divided into four phases: image acquisition and preprocessing, data augmentation, feature extraction and classification. In the first phase, data have been collected using a drone in real time, and preprocessing has been performed to improve the images. In the second phase, four data augmentation techniques have been applied to increase the size of the real-time dataset. In the third phase, feature extraction has been done using two deep convolutional neural network (DCNN)-based models, individually, ResNet49 and ResNet41. In the last phase, four machine learning classifiers random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), logistic regression (LR) and eXtreme gradient boosting (XGBoost) have been employed, one by one. Findings These proposed systems have been trained and tested using our own real-time dataset that consists of healthy and unhealthy leaves for six crops such as corn, grapes, okara, mango, plum and lemon. The proposed combination of Resnet49-SVM and ResNet41-SVM has achieved accuracy of 99 and 97%, respectively, for the images that have been collected from the city of Kurukshetra, India. Originality/value The proposed system makes novel contribution by using a newly proposed real time dataset that has been collected with the help of a drone. The collected image data has been augmented using scaling, rotation, flipping and brightness techniques. The work uses a novel combination of machine learning methods based classification with ResNet49 and ResNet41 based feature extraction.

Rotated target recognition is a challenge for Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), and the current solution is to make CNN rotational invariant through data augmentation. However, data augmentation makes CNN easy to overfit small scale sonar image datasets, and increases its numbers of parameters and training time. This paper proposes to recognize rotated targets of sonar images using a novel CNN with Rotated Inputs (RICNN), which doesn’t need data augmentation. During training, RICNN was trained with sonar images of targets only at one orientation, which avoid it to learn multiple rotated versions of the same targets, and reduces both number of parameters and training time of CNN. During testing, RICNN calculated classification scores for each test image and its all-possible rotated versions. The max of these classification scores were used to simultaneously estimate the category and orientation of each target. Besides, to improve the generalization of RICNN on imbalanced sonar datasets, this paper also designs an imbalanced data sampler. Experiments on a self-made small, imbalanced sonar image rotated target recognition dataset show that the improved RICNN achieves 4.25% higher classification accuracy than data augmentation, and reduces the number of parameters and training time to 2.25% and 19.2% of that of data augmentation method. Moreover, RICNN achieves comparable orientation estimation accuracy with a CNN orientation regressor trained with data augmentation. Codes, dataset are publicly available.

Deep learning has emerged as a promising technique for a variety of elements of infectious disease monitoring and detection, including tuberculosis. We built a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) model to assess the generalizability of the deep learning model using a publicly accessible tuberculosis dataset. This study was able to reliably detect tuberculosis (TB) from chest X-ray images by utilizing image preprocessing, data augmentation, and deep learning classification techniques. Four distinct deep CNNs (Xception, InceptionV3, InceptionResNetV2, and MobileNetV2) were trained, validated, and evaluated for the classification of tuberculosis and nontuberculosis cases using transfer learning from their pretrained starting weights. With an F1-score of 99 percent, InceptionResNetV2 had the highest accuracy. This research is more accurate than earlier published work. Additionally, it outperforms all other models in terms of reliability. The suggested approach, with its state-of-the-art performance, may be helpful for computer-assisted rapid TB detection.

Plant diseases significantly impact agricultural productivity, leading to economic losses and food insecurity worldwide. Timely and accurate detection of plant diseases is critical to mitigate these effects and ensure sustainable farming practices. This project explores the use of deep learning techniques for detecting plant diseases based on leaf images. The system leverages convolutional neural networks (CNNs), specifically pre-trained models like ResNet and MobileNet, fine-tuned on the publicly available PlantVillage dataset. The dataset consists of thousands of labeled images of healthy and diseased leaves from various crops. To enhance model performance and generalization, data augmentation techniques such as rotation, flipping, and brightness adjustments were applied during preprocessing. The proposed system achieves high classification accuracy, validated using metrics such as precision, recall, and F1-score. Additionally, visualization tools like Grad-CAM are used to interpret model predictions, highlighting regions of the leaf that influence the decision-making process. The model is further optimized for deployment on mobile and web platforms, enabling real-time disease diagnosis. This approach offers an efficient, scalable, and user-friendly solution for farmers and agricultural experts, aiding in early disease detection and contributing to improved crop management and yield. Future work involves expanding the dataset, incorporating more plant species, and integrating the model with IoT devices for field application

This composition bargains with the Tomato leaf infection discovery and classification utilizing different strategies like Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), Regions with CNN (R-CNN), Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN. The main issue in the agricultural sector is leaf diseases, which have an impact on crop yield and financial gain. Early detection of leaf diseases in plants is essential to prevent losses to the agricultural sector. There are several tomato leaf diseases that affect the crop's leaves, including the Mosaic virus, Early Blight, Healthy, Septoria leaf, and Bacterial spot. Using deep learning algorithms and image processing methods, we can identify the diseases in tomato leaves using developing deep learning approaches. The implementation procedures in our proposed work involves data collection, pre-processing, training, feature extraction, testing, and classification utilising the Visual Geometry Group (VGG 16) to identify damaged or healthy leaves. VGG 16 is incorporated to categorise the leaves as healthy or diseased based on the data and Regression's boundary box method is adopted. Therefore, using Faster RCNN, a model is created to identify and categorise diseases from every image of a tomato leaf that is used as an input, providing a forecast with a considerably greater degree of accuracy. We obtain an accuracy of approximately 98% after fitting the collected features into the neural network over 20 iterations.

The leather industry plays a crucial role in the production of high-quality leather products to remain competitive in the market. Due to various reasons such as material handling and turning, leather defects can appear at different stages of the production process. This paper proposed deep learning techniques, specifically transfer learning, deep convolutional neural networks (D-CNN), and ensemble learning for automating leather defect detection and classification. The dataset was taken from the open source Kaggle. The dataset was preprocessed from the beginning. However, we performed Error Level Analysis (ELA) to detect possible changes or fraud in the image. We also used data augmentation techniques (resizing, rescaling, flipping, rotation, zooming, and contrasting) on the dataset to improve the model performance. This study investigated deep learning architectures for automatic leather defect detection, comparing them with seven deep convolutional neural networks (D-CNN) models and transfer learning architectures. Furthermore, we introduce and evaluate two novel ensemble models: MER built on transfer learning architecture (MobileNetV2, EfficientNetB0, and ResNet50) and AZL built on D-CNN architecture (AlexNet, ZfNet, and LeNet). A key contribution of this study is the demonstration of significant performance improvements achieved by strategically integrating squeeze and excitation and label smoothing techniques into transfer learning, D-CNN, and ensemble frameworks. Our proposed MER ensemble method achieves a state-of-the-art of 96.39% for leather defect detection. The proposed model was evaluated using performance metrics including precision, recall, F1-score, AUC, ROC, and Matthews Correlation Coefficient (MCC). Additionally, Grad-CAM was employed for explainable AI to visualize and interpret the model’s decision-making process. Comparative analysis against separate transfer learning and D-CNN models fails to establish the superior performance of our MER ensemble, which highlights the potential to significantly advance automated quality inspection in leather production. This study provides insights into evaluating the best deep learning techniques for leather defect classification, paving the way for more accurate, efficient, and reliable industrial applications. Proposes a robust deep learning-based framework for automated leather defect detection using transfer learning, deep CNNs, and two novel ensemble models (MER and AZL), enhanced with squeeze-and-excitation and label smoothing techniques. Achieves state-of-the-art performance with the proposed MER ensemble model, achieve 96.39% accuracy, and demonstrates superior results across precision, recall, F1-score, AUC–ROC, and MCC. Integrates Error Level Analysis (ELA), extensive data augmentation, and Grad-CAM–based explainable AI to ensure data reliability, improve generalization, and provide transparent visual interpretation of defect regions for industrial quality inspection.

Background: The growing demand for automated microorganism classification in the context of Laboratory 4.0 highlights the potential of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) for accurate and efficient image analysis. However, their effectiveness remains limited by the scarcity of large, labeled datasets. This study addresses a key gap in the literature by investigating how commonly used image preprocessing techniques, such as lossy compression, non-uniform scaling (typically applied to fit input images to CNN input layers), and data augmentation, affect the performance of CNNs in automated microorganism classification. Methods: Using two well-established CNN architectures, AlexNet and DenseNet-121, both frequently applied in biomedical image analysis, we conducted a series of computational experiments on a standardized dataset of high-resolution bacterial images. Results: Our results demonstrate under which conditions these preprocessing strategies degrade or improve CNN performance. Using the findings from this research to optimize hyperparameters and train the CNNs, we achieved classification accuracies of 98.61% with AlexNet and 99.82% with DenseNet-121, surpassing the performance reported in current state-of-the-art studies. Conclusions: This study advances laboratory digitalization by reducing data preparation effort, training time, and computational costs, while improving the accuracy of microorganism classification with deep learning. Its contributions also benefit broader biomedical fields such as automated diagnostics, digital pathology, clinical decision support, and point-of-care imaging.

Improving the prediction of extreme wind speed events with generative data augmentation techniques

As part of an effort to develop intelligent agriculture, new methods for enhancing the quality of vegetables are being continually developed. In recent years, the Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) has shown to be the most successful and extensively used approach for identifying the quality of pre-trained vegetables. However, this method is time-consuming due to the scarcity of truly large, significant datasets. Using a pre-trained CNN model as a feature extractor is a straightforward method for utilizing CNNs' capabilities without investing time in training. While, Support Vector Machine (SVM excels at processing data with tiny dimensions and significantly larger instances. SVM more accurately classifies the flatten/vector feature supplied by the CNN fully connected layer with small dimensions. In addition, implementing Data Augmentation (DA) and Weighted Class (WC) for data variety and class imbalance reduction can improve CNN-SVM performance. The research results show highest accuracy during training always achieves 100% across all experimental options. With an average accuracy of 69.66% in the testing process and 92.51% in the prediction process for all data, the experimental findings demonstrate that CNN-SVM outperforms CNN in terms of accuracy performance in all possible experiments, with or without WC and or DA approach.

This study develops an automatic algorithm for detecting Alzheimer's disease (AD) using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) through deep learning and feature selection techniques. It utilizes a dataset of 6400 MRI images from Kaggle, categorized into four classes. Initially, the study employs pretrained CNN architectures—DenseNet-201, MobileNet-v2, ResNet-18, ResNet-50, ResNet-101, and ShuffleNet—for classification using five fold cross-validation, with DenseNet-201 achieving the highest accuracy of 82.11%. Due to the dataset's size and imbalance, as well as the long training times, the study aims to create a more efficient algorithm. The CNNs are used as deep feature extractors from AD images, and the extracted features are reduced using a new fine-tuning neighborhood component analysis (FTNCA) algorithm, which minimizes loss and determines the optimal tolerance value. The essential features are then classified using various machine learning algorithms, including artificial neural network (ANN), K-nearest neighbor (KNN), Naïve Bayes, and support vector machine (SVM). Experimental results reveal that reducing the feature set from 2048 to 344 allows the ResNet-50-FTNCA-KNN model to achieve 100% accuracy, significantly enhancing AD detection. This approach will aid in the early diagnosis and treatment of AD patients.

Aquaculture plays a crucial role in global food security; however, disease outbreaks remain a major constraint to sustainable production. Rapid and reliable detection of fish diseases is essential to reduce mortality, economic losses, and the misuse of antimicrobials in aquaculture systems. Conventional diagnostic approaches, such as clinical observation and bacterial culturing, are time-consuming, costly, and require specialized expertise. Recent advances in deep learning, particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have shown promise in automating image-based disease detection. This study aimed to compare a lightweight three-layer CNN model with pre-trained deep learning architectures (VGG16, InceptionV3, and ResNet50) for multi-class classification of infected freshwater fish species using a balanced image dataset collected from aquaculture farms in Thailand. Images from clinically infected freshwater fish were collected during routine farm inspections across six provinces in Thailand. The dataset included 424 images of four species: Asian seabass (Lates calcarifer), red tilapia (Oreochromis sp.), snakeskin gourami (Trichopodus pectoralis), and snakeheads (Channa striata). After preprocessing, a balanced dataset of 56 images per class (totaling 224) was created. The dataset was divided into training (80%) and testing (20%) subsets. On-the-fly data augmentation techniques, such as rotation, brightness adjustment, flipping, shifting, shearing, and zooming, were applied to the training data to reduce overfitting. A lightweight, three-layer CNN model with stochastic gradient descent was used and compared with pre-trained architectures (VGG16, InceptionV3, and ResNet50). Model performance was assessed through accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, confusion matrix analysis, and five-fold cross-validation. Among the evaluated models, InceptionV3 achieved the highest classification accuracy (56.82%), followed by VGG16 (43.18%) and the proposed CNN (38.64%), while ResNet50 performed poorly (25%). The InceptionV3 model also demonstrated higher average precision (63%), recall (57%), and F1-score (56.75%), indicating superior classification capabilities. Confusion matrix analysis revealed that InceptionV3 correctly classified 25 out of 44 test images, outperforming the proposed CNN (17 correct predictions) and VGG16 (19 correct predictions). Five-fold cross-validation further confirmed the stability and relatively better performance of the InceptionV3 model. The comparative evaluation shows that pre-trained CNN architectures, especially InceptionV3, outperform a lightweight three-layer CNN when trained on small, balanced datasets of infected fish images. Although the proposed lightweight CNN has limited accuracy, its low computational needs suggest it could be useful in resource-limited aquaculture settings. Incorporating deep learning-based image analysis into aquaculture health monitoring systems could enable quick disease triage, support timely management decisions, and promote better biosecurity and sustainable fish production. Future research should increase the dataset size, include more fish species and disease types, and test model performance across different farming environments to improve its generalizability and practical use.

Leaf disease detection is a crucial task in modern agriculture, aiding in early diagnosis and prevention of crop infections. In this research paper, authors present a comprehensive study comparing nine widely used pre-trained models, namely DenseNet201, EfficientNetB3, EfficientNetB4, InceptionResNetV2, MobileNetV2, ResNet50, ResNet152, VGG16, and Xception, with our newly developed custom CNN (Convolutional Neural Network) for leaf disease detection. The objective is to determine if our custom CNN can match the performance of these established pre-trained models while maintaining superior efficiency. The authors trained and fine-tuned each pre-trained model and our custom CNN on a large dataset of labeled leaf images, covering various diseases and healthy states. Subsequently, the authors evaluated the models using standard metrics, including accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, to gauge their overall performance. Additionally, the authors analyzed computational efficiency regarding training time and memory consumption. Surprisingly, our results indicate that the custom CNN performs comparable to the pre-trained models, despite their sophisticated architectures and extensive pre-training on massive datasets. Moreover, our custom CNN demonstrates superior efficiency, outperforming the pre-trained models regarding training speed and memory requirements. These findings highlight the potential of custom CNN architectures for leaf disease detection tasks, offering a compelling alternative to the commonly used pre-trained models. The efficiency gains achieved by our custom CNN can be beneficial in resource-constrained environments, enabling faster inference and deployment of leaf disease detection systems. Overall, our research contributes to the advancement of agricultural technology by presenting a robust and efficient solution for the early detection of leaf diseases, thereby aiding in crop protection and yield enhancement.

Tuberculosis (TB) is determined as a major health threat resulting in approximately 1.8 million people died in 2015 in most of the low and middle income countries. Many of those deaths could have been prevented if TB had been diagnosed and treated at an earlier stage. Nevertheless, recent advanced diagnosis techniques such as the methods of frontal thoracic radiographs have been still cost prohibitive for mass adoption due to the need of individual analysis of each radiograph by properly experienced radiologists. In addition, current outperformances of deep learning accomplish significant results for classification tasks on diverse domains, but its capability remains limited for tuberculosis detection. Therefore, in this study, we examine the efficiency of deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs) for detecting TB on chest radiographs using public ChestXray14 as training dataset and Montgomery and Shenzhen as two external testing datasets. Multiple preprocessing techniques, tSNE visualization and data augmentation are first performed. Three different pre-trained DCNNs, namely ResNet152, Inception-ResNet and DenseNet121 models are then used to classify X-ray images as having manifestations of pulmonary TB or as healthy. We observe that appropriate data augmentation techniques are able to further increase accuracies of DCNNs. We achieve the best classifier having an average AUC of 0.95 with DenseNet121 while 0.91 and 0.77 with Inception-ResNet and ResNet121, respectively.