Automatic Counting Method Research Articles

Automatic Paddy Planthopper Detection and Counting Using Faster R-CNN

Counting planthoppers manually is laborious and yields inconsistent results, particularly when dealing with species with similar features, such as the brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens; BPH), whitebacked planthopper (Sogatella furcifera; WBPH), zigzag leafhopper (Maiestas dorsalis; ZIGZAG), and green leafhopper (Nephotettix malayanus and Nephotettix virescens; GLH). Most of the available automated counting methods are limited to populations of a small density and often do not consider those with a high density, which require more complex solutions due to overlapping objects. Therefore, this research presents a comprehensive assessment of an object detection algorithm specifically developed to precisely detect and quantify planthoppers. It utilises annotated datasets obtained from sticky light traps, comprising 1654 images across four distinct classes of planthoppers and one class of benign insects. The datasets were subjected to data augmentation and utilised to train four convolutional object detection models based on transfer learning. The results indicated that Faster R-CNN VGG 16 outperformed other models, achieving a mean average precision (mAP) score of 97.69% and exhibiting exceptional accuracy in classifying all planthopper categories. The correctness of the model was verified by entomologists, who confirmed a classification and counting accuracy rate of 98.84%. Nevertheless, the model fails to recognise certain samples because of the high density of the population and the significant overlap among them. This research effectively resolved the issue of low- to medium-density samples by achieving very precise and rapid detection and counting.

The Impact of Tree Density on Automated Oil Palm Tree Counting Accuracy

The rapid development of oil palm plantations in Kualuh Leidong Subdistrict, Labuhanbatu Utara District, North Sumatra Province has led to an increased need for effective and efficient monitoring and supervision of oil palm trees. One method that supports such monitoring and supervision is the use of an automatic counting method using orthophoto data. This orthophoto data was used for automatic tree counting using a deep learning method with the Faster R-CNN algorithm. The study considered two planting patterns: regular planting patterns with spacing of 4 to 9 meters, and random planting patterns with varying spacing. Data processing involved an epoch value of 80 and a batch size value of 4. The accuracy of the automatic oil palm tree counting was evaluated based on the density of the spacing between trees with reference to the ground truth. The findings indicated that the deep learning Faster R-CNN algorithm achieved higher accuracy in automatic calculations for regular planting patterns.

Green pepper fruits counting based on improved DeepSort and optimized Yolov5s.

Green pepper yield estimation is crucial for establishing harvest and storage strategies. This paper proposes an automatic counting method for green pepper fruits based on object detection and multi-object tracking algorithm. Green pepper fruits have colors similar to leaves and are often occluded by each other, posing challenges for detection. Based on the YOLOv5s, the CS_YOLOv5s model is specifically designed for green pepper fruit detection. In the CS_YOLOv5s model, a Slim-Nick combined with GSConv structure is utilized in the Neck to reduce model parameters while enhancing detection speed. Additionally, the CBAM attention mechanism is integrated into the Neck to enhance the feature perception of green peppers at various locations and enhance the feature extraction capabilities of the model. According to the test results, the CS_YOLOv5s model of mAP, Precision and Recall, and Detection time of a single image are 98.96%, 95%, 97.3%, and 6.3 ms respectively. Compared to the YOLOv5s model, the Detection time of a single image is reduced by 34.4%, while Recall and mAP values are improved. Additionally, for green pepper fruit tracking, this paper combines appearance matching algorithms and track optimization algorithms from SportsTrack to optimize the DeepSort algorithm. Considering three different scenarios of tracking, the MOTA and MOTP are stable, but the ID switch is reduced by 29.41%. Based on the CS_YOLOv5s model, the counting performance before and after DeepSort optimization is compared. For green pepper counting in videos, the optimized DeepSort algorithm achieves ACP (Average Counting Precision), MAE (Mean Absolute Error), and RMSE (Root Mean Squared Error) values of 95.33%, 3.33, and 3.74, respectively. Compared to the original algorithm, ACP increases by 7.2%, while MAE and RMSE decrease by 6.67 and 6.94, respectively. Additionally, Based on the optimized DeepSort, the fruit counting results using YOLOv5s model and CS_YOLOv5s model were compared, and the results show that using the better object detector CS_YOLOv5s has better counting accuracy and robustness.

Artificial intelligence methods in information‑measuring and control systems

In modern agriculture, there is a need for efficient methods of monitoring and controlling the condition of agricultural objects. This requires the development of technologies capable of automatically recognizing and counting these objects based on data obtained from small unmanned aerial vehicles. Aim is to develop and implement a method for automatic recognition and counting of agricultural objects based on processing a stream of frames captured by a small unmanned aerial vehicle, in order to improve the efficiency of monitoring and managing agricultural resources. Results. A system has been developed that uses computer vision methods to analyze the video stream and demonstrates high accuracy in recognizing and counting haystacks in the captured frames. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed approach. Practical Significance. The developed system has significant practical value for agriculture by automating the process of monitoring and controlling the condition of agricultural objects. This can lead to improved land resource utilization efficiency and reduced manual labor costs.

U2-Net and ResNet50-Based Automatic Pipeline for Bacterial Colony Counting.

In this paper, an automatic colony counting system based on an improved image preprocessing algorithm and convolutional neural network (CNN)-assisted automatic counting method was developed. Firstly, we assembled an LED backlighting illumination platform as an image capturing system to obtain photographs of laboratory cultures. Consequently, a dataset was introduced consisting of 390 photos of agar plate cultures, which included 8 microorganisms. Secondly, we implemented a new algorithm for image preprocessing based on light intensity correction, which facilitated clearer differentiation between colony and media areas. Thirdly, a U2-Net was used to predict the probability distribution of the edge of the Petri dish in images to locate region of interest (ROI), and then threshold segmentation was applied to separate it. This U2-Net achieved an F1 score of 99.5% and a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.0033 on the validation set. Then, another U2-Net was used to separate the colony region within the ROI. This U2-Net achieved an F1 score of 96.5% and an MAE of 0.005 on the validation set. After that, the colony area was segmented into multiple components containing single or adhesive colonies. Finally, the colony components (CC) were innovatively rotated and the image crops were resized as the input (with 14,921 image crops in the training set and 4281 image crops in the validation set) for the ResNet50 network to automatically count the number of colonies. Our method achieved an overall recovery of 97.82% for colony counting and exhibited excellent performance in adhesion classification. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed "light intensity correction-based image preprocessing→U2-Net segmentation for Petri dish edge→U2-Net segmentation for colony region→ResNet50-based counting" scheme represents a new attempt and demonstrates a high degree of automation and accuracy in recognizing and counting single-colony and multi-colony targets.

An automatic cough counting method and system construction for portable devices.

Cough is a common symptom of respiratory diseases, and prolonged monitoring of cough can help assist doctors in making judgments about patients' conditions, among which cough frequency is an indicator that characterizes the state of the patient's lungs. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to design an automatic cough counting system to monitor the number of coughs per minute for a long period of time. In this paper, a complete cough counting process is proposed, including denoising, segment extraction, eigenvalue calculation, recognition, and counting process; and a wearable automatic cough counting device containing acquisition and reception software. The design and construction of the algorithm is based on realistically captured cough-containing audio from 50 patients, combined with short-time features, and Meier cepstrum coefficients as features characterizing the cough. The accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and F1 score of the method were 93.24%, 97.58%, 86.97%, and 94.47%, respectively, with a Kappa value of 0.9209, an average counting error of 0.46 counts for a 60-s speech segment, and an average runtime of 2.80 ± 2.27s. This method improves the double threshold method in terms of the threshold and eigenvalues of the cough segments' sensitivity and has better performance in terms of accuracy, real-time performance, and computing speed, which can be applied to real-time cough counting and monitoring in small portable devices with limited computing power. The developed wearable portable automatic cough counting device and the accompanying host computer software application can realize the long-term monitoring of patients' coughing condition.

FIDMT-GhostNet: a lightweight density estimation model for wheat ear counting.

Wheat is one of the important food crops in the world, and the stability and growth of wheat production have a decisive impact on global food security and economic prosperity. Wheat counting is of great significance for agricultural management, yield prediction and resource allocation. Research shows that the wheat ear counting method based on deep learning has achieved remarkable results and the model accuracy is high. However, the complex background of wheat fields, dense wheat ears, small wheat ear targets, and different sizes of wheat ears make the accurate positioning and counting of wheat ears still face great challenges. To this end, an automatic positioning and counting method of wheat ears based on FIDMT-GhostNet (focal inverse distance transform maps - GhostNet) is proposed. Firstly, a lightweight wheat ear counting network using GhostNet as the feature extraction network is proposed, aiming to obtain multi-scale wheat ear features. Secondly, in view of the difficulty in counting caused by dense wheat ears, the point annotation-based network FIDMT (focal inverse distance transform maps) is introduced as a baseline network to improve counting accuracy. Furthermore, to address the problem of less feature information caused by the small ear of wheat target, a dense upsampling convolution module is introduced to improve the resolution of the image and extract more detailed information. Finally, to overcome background noise or wheat ear interference, a local maximum value detection strategy is designed to realize automatic processing of wheat ear counting. To verify the effectiveness of the FIDMT-GhostNet model, the constructed wheat image data sets including WEC, WEDD and GWHD were used for training and testing. Experimental results show that the accuracy of the wheat ear counting model reaches 0.9145, and the model parameters reach 8.42M, indicating that the model FIDMT-GhostNet proposed in this study has good performance.

An experimental setup and segmentation method for CFU counting on agar plate for the assessment of drinking water

Quantification of bacterial colonies on an agar plate is a daily routine for a microbiologist to determine the number of viable microorganisms in the sample. In general, microbiologists perform a visual assessment of bacterial colonies which is time-consuming (takes 2 min per plate), tedious, and subjective. Some automatic counting algorithms are developed that save labour and time, but their results are affected by the non-illumination on an agar plate. To improve this, the present manuscript aims to develop an inexpensive and efficient device to acquire S.aureus images via an automatic counting method using image processing techniques under real laboratory conditions. The proposed method (P_ColonyCount) includes the region of interest extraction and color space transformation followed by filtering, thresholding, morphological operation, distance transform, and watershed technique for the quantification of isolated and overlapping colonies. The present work also shows a comparative study on grayscale, K, and green channels by applying different filter and thresholding techniques on 42 images. The results of all channels were compared with the score provided by the expert (manual count). Out of all the proposed method (P_ColonyCount), the K channel gives the best outcome in comparison with the other two channels (grayscale and green) in terms of precision, recall, and F-measure which are 0.99, 0.99, and 0.99 (2 h), 0.98, 0.99, and 0.98 (4 h), and 0.98, 0.98, 0.98 (6 h) respectively. The execution time of the manual and the proposed method (P_ColonyCount) for 42 images ranges from 19 to 113 s and 15 to 31 s respectively. Apart from this, a user-friendly graphical user interface is also developed for the convenient enumeration of colonies without any expert knowledge/training. The developed imaging device will be useful for researchers and teaching lab settings.

A Machine Learning-Based Image Segmentation Method to Quantify In Vitro Osteoclast Culture Endpoints

Quantification of in vitro osteoclast cultures (e.g. cell number) often relies on manual counting methods. These approaches are labour intensive, time consuming and result in substantial inter- and intra-user variability. This study aimed to develop and validate an automated workflow to robustly quantify in vitro osteoclast cultures. Using ilastik, a machine learning-based image analysis software, images of tartrate resistant acid phosphatase-stained mouse osteoclasts cultured on dentine discs were used to train the ilastik-based algorithm. Assessment of algorithm training showed that osteoclast numbers strongly correlated between manual- and automatically quantified values (r = 0.87). Osteoclasts were consistently faithfully segmented by the model when visually compared to the original reflective light images. The ability of this method to detect changes in osteoclast number in response to different treatments was validated using zoledronate, ticagrelor, and co-culture with MCF7 breast cancer cells. Manual and automated counting methods detected a 70% reduction (p < 0.05) in osteoclast number, when cultured with 10 nM zoledronate and a dose-dependent decrease with 1–10 μM ticagrelor (p < 0.05). Co-culture with MCF7 cells increased osteoclast number by ≥ 50% irrespective of quantification method. Overall, an automated image segmentation and analysis workflow, which consistently and sensitively identified in vitro osteoclasts, was developed. Advantages of this workflow are (1) significantly reduction in user variability of endpoint measurements (93%) and analysis time (80%); (2) detection of osteoclasts cultured on different substrates from different species; and (3) easy to use and freely available to use along with tutorial resources.

Automated Vehicle Counting from Pre-Recorded Video Using You Only Look Once (YOLO) Object Detection Model.

Different techniques are being applied for automated vehicle counting from video footage, which is a significant subject of interest to many researchers. In this context, the You Only Look Once (YOLO) object detection model, which has been developed recently, has emerged as a promising tool. In terms of accuracy and flexible interval counting, the adequacy of existing research on employing the model for vehicle counting from video footage is unlikely sufficient. The present study endeavors to develop computer algorithms for automated traffic counting from pre-recorded videos using the YOLO model with flexible interval counting. The study involves the development of algorithms aimed at detecting, tracking, and counting vehicles from pre-recorded videos. The YOLO model was applied in TensorFlow API with the assistance of OpenCV. The developed algorithms implement the YOLO model for counting vehicles in two-way directions in an efficient way. The accuracy of the automated counting was evaluated compared to the manual counts, and was found to be about 90 percent. The accuracy comparison also shows that the error of automated counting consistently occurs due to undercounting from unsuitable videos. In addition, a benefit-cost (B/C) analysis shows that implementing the automated counting method returns 1.76 times the investment.

An integrated framework of mobile crowd estimation for the 2019, July 1st rally in Hong Kong.

Traditional approach of mobile crowd estimation involves counting a group of individuals at a specific place, manually, in real-time. It is a laborious exercise that can be physically and mentally demanding. In Hong Kong, a large rally can last more than six hours, making the manual count method susceptible to human errors. While crowd counting using object detection and tracking has been well-established in computer vision, such application has remained relatively small scale within a controlled indoor setting (e.g. counting people at fixed gateways in a mall). No attempt to date has applied the automatic crowd counting method to count hundreds of thousands of people along an open stretch of rally route within the complex urban outdoor landscape. This research proposed an integrated approach that combines the capture-recapture method in statistics and a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) method in computer vision to count the mobile crowd. The research teams implemented the integrative approach and counted 276,970 people with a 95% confidence interval of 263,663 to 290,276 in the 2019, July 1st Rally in Hong Kong. This work counted the attendance of a large-scale rally as a proof of concept to fill in a gap in the empirical studies. The intellectual merits and research findings shed useful insights to improve mobile population estimation and leverage alternative data sources to support related scientific applications.

An automatic recognition method of nematode survival rate based on bright field and dark field experimental images.

The survival rate of experimental animals is a very important index in chemical toxicity evaluation experiments. The calculation of nematode survival rate is used in many experiments. Traditional survival rate quantification methods require manual counting. This is a time-consuming and laborious work when using 384-well plate for high-throughput chemical toxicity assessment experiments. At present, there is a great need for an automatic method to identify the survival rate of nematodes in the experiment of chemical toxicity evaluation. We designed an automatic nematode survival rate recognition method by combining the bright field experimental image of nematodes and the dark field image of nematodes which is captured after adding Propidium Iodide dye, and used it to calculate the nematode survival rate in different chemical environments. Experiment results show that the survival rate obtained by our automatic counting method is very similar to the survival rate obtained by manual counting. Through several different chemical experiments, we can see that chemicals with different toxicity have different effects on the survival rate of nematodes. And the survival rate of nematodes under different chemical concentrations has an obvious gradient trend from high concentration to low concentration. In addition, our method can quantify the motility of nematodes. There are also significant differences in the motility of nematodes cultured in different chemical environments. Moreover, the nematode motility under different chemical concentrations showed an obvious gradient change trend from high concentration to low concentration. Our study provides an accurate and efficient nematode survival rate recognition method for chemical toxicology research.

Automatic rape flower cluster counting method based on low-cost labelling and UAV-RGB images

BackgroundThe flowering period is a critical time for the growth of rape plants. Counting rape flower clusters can help farmers to predict the yield information of the corresponding rape fields. However, counting in-field is a time-consuming and labor-intensive task. To address this, we explored a deep learning counting method based on unmanned aircraft vehicle (UAV). The proposed method developed the in-field counting of rape flower clusters as a density estimation problem. It is different from the object detection method of counting the bounding boxes. The crucial step of the density map estimation using deep learning is to train a deep neural network that maps from an input image to the corresponding annotated density map.ResultsWe explored a rape flower cluster counting network series: RapeNet and RapeNet+. A rectangular box labeling-based rape flower clusters dataset (RFRB) and a centroid labeling-based rape flower clusters dataset (RFCP) were used for network model training. To verify the performance of RapeNet series, the paper compares the counting result with the real values of manual annotation. The average accuracy (Acc), relative root mean square error (rrMSE) and R^2 of the metrics are up to 0.9062, 12.03 and 0.9635 on the dataset RFRB, and 0.9538, 5.61 and 0.9826 on the dataset RFCP, respectively. The resolution has little influence for the proposed model. In addition, the visualization results have some interpretability.ConclusionsExtensive experimental results demonstrate that the RapeNet series outperforms other state-of-the-art counting approaches. The proposed method provides an important technical support for the crop counting statistics of rape flower clusters in field.

An automatic wheat ear counting model based on the minimum area intersection ratio algorithm and transfer learning

An accurate prediction of the number of wheat ears per unit area is crucial to wheat production, current research on the number of wheat ears per unit area is still dominated by manual surveys. In order to develop a rapid and low-cost algorithm for counting wheat ears on wider genotypes, reduce the influence of occlusion and adhesion on the recognition results of wheat ears image, this research proposes an automatic smartphone-based wheat ear counting method. By adopting the minimum area intersection ratio (MAIR) feature extraction algorithm, the transfer learning technology is used to achieve automatic wheat ear counting based on the YOLOv5 model. The K-means feature extraction algorithm is optimized, and the MAIR feature detection algorithm is adopted to improve recognition accuracy, achieving an optimized wheat ear density recognition of R2 = 0.87, compared with the model without the MAIR algorithm, the recognition accuracy was significantly improved. In the efficiency and performance test on a wider range of genotypes, the accuracy and efficiency of the model based on YOLOv5s training are optimal, the optimal depth transfer model achieves R2 = 0.95, the results demonstrated that transfer learning could significantly improve the recognition accuracy of the recognition model. In addition, the accurate density identification was achieved in the whole interval from the filling period to maturity. Therefore, the wheat ear number prediction based on MAIR algorithm and transfer learning technology can improve the accuracy of wheat ear counting.

Quality of Automatic Traffic Volume Counting by Cameras and Impact on the Qualitative Indicators of Traffic

This paper presents research on the collection, analysis, and evaluation of the fundamental data needed for road traffic systems. The basis for the research, analysis, planning and projections for traffic systems are traffic counts and data collection related to traffic volume and type. The quality and accuracy of this data are very important for traffic planning or optimization. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to apply advanced methods of automatic counting of motorized traffic and to evaluate the impact of this data on the measurement of important traffic indicators. The accuracy of measurements arising from the traditional method of data collection through manual counting will be compared with the most advanced methods of automatic counting through cameras. For this purpose, an analytical algorithm for the recognition and processing of data related to road users as a function of the time of day was applied. The program was written in the programming language Python, and the accuracy of the data and its effect on the results of qualitative traffic indicators were analyzed using the Synchro software model. The developed program is capable of recognizing and classifying different types of vehicles in traffic, such as motorbikes, motorcycles, cars, pick-ups, trucks, vans and buses, as well as counting the traffic volume over time. The results obtained from these two models show the advantages of applying advanced methods of data collection and processing related to dynamic traffic processes, as well as the quality in terms of the impact on the measurement of qualitative traffic indicators. A comparison of the quality of results for the different time intervals and varying levels of visibility in traffic is presented using tables and graphs. At nighttime, when visibility was poor, the discrepancy between the manual and automatic counting methods was around 9.5%. However, when visibility was good, the difference between manual counting and the automated program was 4.87% for the period 19:00–19:15 and 3.64% for the period 05:00–05:15. This discrepancy was especially noticeable when distinguishing between vehicle categories, due to the limitations in the accuracy in recognizing and measuring the dimensions of these vehicles. The difference between the two calculation models has a minor effect on qualitative traffic indicators such as: approach LOS, progression factor, v/s, v/c, clearance time, lane group flow, adj. flow, satd, and flow approach delay.

Testing a new automated macrocharcoal detection method applied to a transect of lacustrine sediment cores in eastern Canada

Over the past decades, the abundance and area of macrocharcoal (i.e. ≥ 150 μm in diameter) fragments from sedimentary sequences have been quantified using visual or semi-automated methods to reconstruct fire histories. However, the lack of uniformity between counting methods used in each study could introduce methodological biases influencing fire frequency reconstructions, and therefore impact their interpretation and limit their comparisons. To overcome this issue, we propose here a new automated method to quantify the number of macrocharcoal fragments and measure their areas from high-definition image capture, based on the analysis of colorimetric parameters. We tested the efficiency of our method and reconstructed charcoal influx over the last 8000 years by comparing visual and automatic counting methods along a north-south transect from eastern Canada, estimating number and size, and the associated local and regional fire frequencies. Results show that our automated method is efficient in detecting charcoal particles, except for highly minerogenic samples, and suggest that the traditional visual inspection tends to overestimate the size of macrocharcoal fragments. Local fire frequencies varied greatly depending on the macrocharcoal detection method used. At the regional scale they seem closer, and our automated method reproduces similar trends to published studies in our study area. However, it does represent a methodological advancement, particularly for recent centuries, that should be considered for future paleoecological studies.

A disector-based framework for the automatic optical fractionator

Stereology-based methods provide the current state-of-the-art approaches for accurate quantification of numbers and other morphometric parameters of biological objects in stained tissue sections. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI)-based deep learning (DL) offers the possibility of improving throughput by automating the collection of stereology data. We have recently shown that DL can effectively achieve comparable accuracy to manual stereology but with higher repeatability, improved throughput, and less variation due to human factors by quantifying the total number of immunostained cells at their maximal profile of focus in extended depth of field (EDF) images. In the first of two novel contributions in this work, we propose a semi-automatic approach using a handcrafted Adaptive Segmentation Algorithm (ASA) to automatically generate ground truth on EDF images for training our deep learning (DL) models to automatically count cells using unbiased stereology methods. This update increases the amount of training data, thereby improving the accuracy and efficiency of automatic cell counting methods, without a requirement for extra expert time. The second contribution of this work is a Multi-channel Input and Multi-channel Output (MIMO) method using a U-Net deep learning architecture for automatic cell counting in a stack of z-axis images (also known as disector stacks). This DL-based digital automation of the ordinary optical fractionator ensures accurate counts through spatial separation of stained cells in the z-plane, thereby avoiding false negatives from overlapping cells in EDF images without the shortcomings of 3D and recurrent DL models. The contribution overcomes the issue of under-counting errors with EDF images due to overlapping cells in the z-plane (masking). We demonstrate the practical applications of these advances with automatic disector-based estimates of the total number of NeuN-immunostained neurons in a mouse neocortex. In summary, this work provides the first demonstration of automatic estimation of a total cell number in tissue sections using a combination of deep learning and the disector-based optical fractionator method.

Automatic shrimp counting method using local images and lightweight YOLOv4

Shrimp counting is a fundamental operation for biomass estimation in shrimp culture. It is also vital for achieving reasonable feeding and improving breeding efficiency. The application of computer vision technology in the counting of aquatic products is nondestructive and highly efficient. However, owing to the small size, transparent body, and complex background of shrimp in the actual culture environment, existing methods cannot ensure the lightweight of the model applied while satisfying the counting accuracy, and it is difficult to achieve accurate real-time shrimp counting. Therefore, an automatic shrimp counting method using local images and lightweight YOLOv4 (Light-YOLOv4) was proposed in this study. Multiple local shrimp images were randomly cropped from the original top-view images previously collected using image processing technologies to construct a counting dataset. Subsequently, a local shrimp counting model based on Light-YOLOv4 is constructed and trained using transfer learning. Based on the trained model, the number of shrimp in each local shrimp image was predicted. The number of shrimp in the original shrimp image was obtained through a merging process, and the number of shrimp in the culture area was determined using the frame average method. The method was tested on a real shrimp dataset, and the Light-YOLOv4 local shrimp counting model achieved a counting precision of 92.12%, recall of 94.21%, F1 value of 93.15%, and mean average precision of 93.16%. Compared with other counting models, the proposed method exhibits a better comprehensive performance in terms of the counting accuracy, model size, and detection speed. Furthermore, when shrimp were counted within the entire culture area, the results were consistent with the true values.

A method for automatic real-time detection and counting of fruit fly pests in orchards by trap bottles via convolutional neural network with attention mechanism added

Fruit fly pests seriously affect the quality and safety of various melons, fruits, and vegetable crops. Many farmers lack sufficient knowledge of the level of pest occurrence, which leads to the over-use of pesticides, resulting in environmental pollution and quality degradation of agricultural products. The combination of artificial intelligence and agricultural technology can continuously and dynamically monitor pests in orchards, help scientific researchers and fruit farmers master pest data in time, reduce the use of artificial and pesticides, and achieve scientific early warning and prevention of pests. In this paper, the sexual attractant is placed in the pest trap bottle, the optical flow method, U-Net semantic segmentation, and the YOLOv5 algorithm with SE, CBAM, CA, and ECA attention mechanisms are used to detect and count live Bactrocera cucurbitae on the bottle surface, and then we use Hough circle detection method to detect the entrance position of the trap bottle, and finally count the number of B. cucurbitae entering the trap bottle in combination with the position information of B. cucurbitae and the entrance of the trap bottle. The experimental results show that: the accuracy of counting B. cucurbitae on the surface of the trap bottle can reach 93.5%, and the accuracy of counting B. cucurbitae entering the trap bottle can reach 94.3%, which can dynamically monitor the number of pests in the orchard in real time.

Automated recognition and analysis of head thrashes behavior in C. elegans

BackgroundLocomotive behaviors are a rapid evaluation indicator reflecting whether the nervous system of worms is damaged, and has been proved to be sensitive to chemical toxicity. In many toxicological studies, C. elegans head thrashes is a key indicator of locomotive behaviors to measure the vitality of worms. In previous studies, the number of head thrashes was manually counted, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive.ResultsThis paper presents an automatic recognition and counting method for head thrashes behavior of worms from experimental videos. First, the image processing algorithm is designed for worm morphology features calculation, mean gray values of head and tail are used to locate the head of worm accurately. Next, the worm skeleton is extracted and divided into equal parts. The angle formulas are used to calculate the bending angle of the head of worm. Finally, the number of head thrashes is counted according to the bending angle of the head in each frame. The robustness of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by comparing the counting results of the manual counting. It is proved that the proposed algorithm can recognize the occurrence of head thrashes of C. elegans of different strains. In addition, the difference of the head thrashes behavior of different worm strains is analyzed, it is proved that the relationship between worm head thrashes behavior and lifespan.ConclusionsA new method is proposed to automatically count the number of head thrashes of worms. This algorithm makes it possible to count the number of head thrashes from the worm videos collected by the automatic tracking system. The proposed algorithm will play an important role in toxicological research and worm vitality research. The code is freely available at https://github.com/hthana/HTC.