Automatic ladybird beetle detection using deep-learning models

PLoS One. 2021 Jun 10;16(6):e0253027. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0253027. eCollection 2021.

Abstract

Fast and accurate taxonomic identification of invasive trans-located ladybird beetle species is essential to prevent significant impacts on biological communities, ecosystem functions, and agricultural business economics. Therefore, in this work we propose a two-step automatic detector for ladybird beetles in random environment images as the first stage towards an automated classification system. First, an image processing module composed of a saliency map representation, simple linear iterative clustering superpixels segmentation, and active contour methods allowed us to generate bounding boxes with possible ladybird beetles locations within an image. Subsequently, a deep convolutional neural network-based classifier selects only the bounding boxes with ladybird beetles as the final output. This method was validated on a 2, 300 ladybird beetle image data set from Ecuador and Colombia obtained from the iNaturalist project. The proposed approach achieved an accuracy score of 92% and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.977 for the bounding box generation and classification tasks. These successful results enable the proposed detector as a valuable tool for helping specialists in the ladybird beetle detection problem.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Animals
  • Coleoptera / classification*
  • Colombia
  • Deep Learning
  • Ecuador
  • Introduced Species
  • Neural Networks, Computer
  • Pattern Recognition, Automated / methods*

Grants and funding

NP. Collaboration Grants Program (Grant no. 16870), Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ), https://www.usfq.edu.ec/ NP. Funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.