Object Detection of Small Insects in Time-Lapse Camera Recordings

TY - JOUR

T1 - Object Detection of Small Insects in Time-Lapse Camera Recordings

AU - Bjerge, Kim

AU - Frigaard, Carsten Eie

AU - Karstoft, Henrik

PY - 2023/8/18

Y1 - 2023/8/18

N2 - As pollinators, insects play a crucial role in ecosystem management and world food production. However, insect populations are declining, necessitating efficient insect monitoring methods. Existing methods analyze video or time-lapse images of insects in nature, but analysis is challenging as insects are small objects in complex and dynamic natural vegetation scenes. In this work, we provide a dataset of primarily honeybees visiting three different plant species during two months of the summer. The dataset consists of 107,387 annotated time-lapse images from multiple cameras, including 9423 annotated insects. We present a method for detecting insects in time-lapse RGB images, which consists of a two-step process. Firstly, the time-lapse RGB images are preprocessed to enhance insects in the images. This motion-informed enhancement technique uses motion and colors to enhance insects in images. Secondly, the enhanced images are subsequently fed into a convolutional neural network (CNN) object detector. The method improves on the deep learning object detectors You Only Look Once (YOLO) and faster region-based CNN (Faster R-CNN). Using motion-informed enhancement, the YOLO detector improves the average micro F1-score from 0.49 to 0.71, and the Faster R-CNN detector improves the average micro F1-score from 0.32 to 0.56. Our dataset and proposed method provide a step forward for automating the time-lapse camera monitoring of flying insects.

AB - As pollinators, insects play a crucial role in ecosystem management and world food production. However, insect populations are declining, necessitating efficient insect monitoring methods. Existing methods analyze video or time-lapse images of insects in nature, but analysis is challenging as insects are small objects in complex and dynamic natural vegetation scenes. In this work, we provide a dataset of primarily honeybees visiting three different plant species during two months of the summer. The dataset consists of 107,387 annotated time-lapse images from multiple cameras, including 9423 annotated insects. We present a method for detecting insects in time-lapse RGB images, which consists of a two-step process. Firstly, the time-lapse RGB images are preprocessed to enhance insects in the images. This motion-informed enhancement technique uses motion and colors to enhance insects in images. Secondly, the enhanced images are subsequently fed into a convolutional neural network (CNN) object detector. The method improves on the deep learning object detectors You Only Look Once (YOLO) and faster region-based CNN (Faster R-CNN). Using motion-informed enhancement, the YOLO detector improves the average micro F1-score from 0.49 to 0.71, and the Faster R-CNN detector improves the average micro F1-score from 0.32 to 0.56. Our dataset and proposed method provide a step forward for automating the time-lapse camera monitoring of flying insects.

KW - camera recording

KW - deep learning

KW - insect dataset

KW - motion enhancement

KW - object detection

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85168724668

U2 - 10.3390/s23167242

DO - 10.3390/s23167242

M3 - Journal article

C2 - 37631778

SN - 1424-8220

VL - 23

JO - Sensors

JF - Sensors

IS - 16

M1 - 7242

ER -