Deep learning-based seagrass detection and classification from underwater digital images

Author Identifier

Md. Kislu Noman

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6281-1464

Date of Award

2023

Document Type

Thesis - ECU Access Only

Publisher

Edith Cowan University

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

School

School of Science

First Supervisor

Syed Mohammed Shamsul Islam

Second Supervisor

Jumana Abu-Khalaf

Third Supervisor

Seyed Mohammad J. Jalali

Fourth Supervisor

Paul Lavery

Abstract

Deep learning is the most popular branch of machine learning and has achieved great success in many real-life applications. Deep learning algorithms, in particular Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), have rapidly become a method of choice for analysing seagrass image data. Deep learning-based seagrass classification and detection are very challenging due to the limited labelled data, intraclass similarities between species, lighting conditions, and complex shapes and structures in the underwater environment, which make them different from large-scale dataset objects. The light propagating through water is attenuated and scattered selectively, causing severe effects on the quality of underwater images. Besides low contrast, colour distortion and bright specks affect the quality of underwater images. In this thesis, we focus on the problem of single to multi-species seagrass classification and detection from underwater digital images. We investigated the existing seagrass classification and detection models and systematically attempted to improve the performance of seagrass classification and detection by developing different models on several seagrass datasets.

CNNs are a class of artificial neural networks commonly used in deep learning architectures for image recognition, object localization or mapping tasks. CNN-based models are gaining popularity in seagrass identification or mapping due to their automatic feature extraction ability and higher performance over machine learning techniques. Making a deep learning-based model for all domain users (not only computer vision experts or engineers) is also a challenging task because CNNs development requires architectural engineering and hyperparameter tuning.

This thesis investigates the effective development of CNNs on multi-species seagrass datasets to minimise the requirement of architectural engineering and manual hyperparameter tuning for CNN models. This thesis develops a novel metaheuristic algorithm called Opposition-based Flow Direction Algorithm (OFDA) by leveraging the power of the Opposition-based learning technique into the Flow Direction Algorithm to tune and automate the development of CNNs. The proposed deep neuroevolutionary algorithm (OFDA-CNN) outperformed other eight popular optimisation-based neuroevolutionary algorithms on a newly developed multi-species seagrass dataset. The OFDA-CNN algorithm also outperformed the state-of-the-art multi-species seagrass classification performances on publicly available seagrass datasets. This thesis also proposes another novel metaheuristic algorithm called Boosted Atomic Orbital Search (BAOS) to optimize the architecture and tune the hyperparameter of a CNN. The proposed BAOS algorithm improved the search capability of the original version of the Atomic Orbital Search algorithm by incorporating the L´evy flight technique. The optimized deep neuroevolutionary (BAOS-CNN) algorithm achieved the highest accuracy among seven popular optimisation-based CNNs. The BAOS-CNN algorithm also outperformed the state-of-the-art multi-species seagrass classification performances.

This thesis proposes also a two-stage semi-supervised framework for leveraging huge unlabelled seagrass data. We propose an EfficientNet-B5-based semi-supervised framework that leverages a large collection of unlabelled seagrass data with the guidance of a small, labelled seagrass dataset. We introduced a multi-species seagrass classifier based on EfficientNet-B5 that outperformed the state-of-the-art multi-species seagrass classification performances. This thesis also developed a two and half times larger multi-species dataset than the largest publicly available ‘DeepSeagrass’ dataset.

To evaluate the performance of all the proposed models, we trained and tested them on the newly developed and some publicly available challenging seagrass datasets. Our rigorous experiments demonstrated how our models were capable of producing state-of-the-art performances of seagrass classification and detection in both single and multi-species scenarios.

Access Note

Access to this Thesis has been embargoed until 12th April 2028.

Access to this thesis is restricted. Please see the Access Note below for access details.

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