Computerized Detection of Calcium Oxalate Crystal Progression

Abstract

Calcium oxalate crystals in plants can cause health issues such as kidney stones if ingested in large amounts. Calcium oxalate crystallizations affect approximately 4% of plants. Some of these crystallizations are more common, and human and animal ingestion can be avoided if the degree of severity is detected at an early stage. Therefore, in this paper, we present a computerized method for detecting calcium oxalate crystallizations at an early stage, when chances for avoiding it are higher. In our research, electron micrograph processing techniques are used to extract features and measure the degree of crystallization progression in cases of crystalized plants and normal plants. A new fast search algorithm—ODS: One Direction Search—is proposed to detect calcium oxalate crystal progression. The calcium oxalate crystal progression is detected on the basis of electron micrographs of calcium oxalate crystals by means of a temporal test. We employed deep learning for feature extraction. The deep learning technique uses transfer learning, which allows the proposed detection model to be trained on only a small amount of data regarding calcium oxalate crystals for the determination of the presence of calcium oxalate crystals and the severity of the cases. The experimental results, using electron micrographs of 6900 clusters, demonstrated a success rate of 97.5% when detecting cases of calcium oxalate crystals. The simulation results of the new temporal algorithm show an enhancement of the speed by 70% compared to well-known temporal algorithms, and increased accuracy when computing PRSN against other algorithms.