Abstract
The current management of microalgae cultivation requires manual microscopic examination in order to identify desired and competing species, as well as predators. In this study, we trained and tested a transfer learning model modified from EfficientNetV2 B3 model on 434 and 161 prospectively acquired images of the preferred Nanno-chloropsis sp microalgae and competitor Spirulina, respectively, and achieved >98% classification for both species on tenfold cross-validation. The model was further enhanced with gradient-weighted class activation mapping, which allowed visualisation of regions of the input images that were relevant to the classification, thereby improving its explainability. In this paper, we demonstrate that a simple deep transfer learning model can help microalgae farmers to identify and manage microalgae species. The application could enable the widespread adoption of microalgae by more farmers as an enviroment-friendly, drought-proof, and high-productive crop that can be grown on non-arable land and use waste water.
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Data are available on request to the Corresponding Author.
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The authors declare no conflict of interest.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge AlgaePharm, Goondiwindi, Australia for the supply of all images that were used in the research.
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Conceptualisation, J.S., R.A., A.W.; methodology, R.A.; software, O.D.L, L.H.W.; validation, J.S., R.A., E.S, R.C.D.; formal analysis, R.A., E.S., R.C.D., O.S.L, L.H.W; investigation, J.S., R.A, O.S.L, E.S, R.C.D., A.W., L.H.W.; resources, E.R., L.H.W.; data curation, E.R., E.S, R.C.D.; writing—original draft preparation, J.S., R.A., E.S., R.C.D.; writing—review and editing, J.S., R.A., E.S, R.C.D., A.W.; visualisation, J.S., R.A.; supervision and project administration, J.S., R.A.; data acquisition, E.R. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Soar, J. et al. (2023). Deep Image Analysis for Microalgae Identification. In: Delir Haghighi, P., et al. Information Integration and Web Intelligence. iiWAS 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14416. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48316-5_28
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