scholarly journals Assessment of Tree Detection Methods in Multispectral Aerial Images

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (15) ◽  
pp. 2379
Author(s):  
Dagoberto Pulido ◽  
Joaquín Salas ◽  
Matthias Rös ◽  
Klaus Puettmann ◽  
Sertac Karaman

Detecting individual trees and quantifying their biomass is crucial for carbon accounting procedures at the stand, landscape, and national levels. A significant challenge for many organizations is the amount of effort necessary to document carbon storage levels, especially in terms of human labor. To advance towards the goal of efficiently assessing the carbon content of forest, we evaluate methods to detect trees from high-resolution images taken from unoccupied aerial systems (UAS). In the process, we introduce the Digital Elevated Vegetation Model (DEVM), a representation that combines multispectral images, digital surface models, and digital terrain models. We show that the DEVM facilitates the development of refined synthetic data to detect individual trees using deep learning-based approaches. We carried out experiments in two tree fields located in different countries. Simultaneously, we perform comparisons among an array of classical and deep learning-based methods highlighting the precision and reliability of the DEVM.

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (12) ◽  
pp. 2417
Author(s):  
Savvas Karatsiolis ◽  
Andreas Kamilaris ◽  
Ian Cole

Estimating the height of buildings and vegetation in single aerial images is a challenging problem. A task-focused Deep Learning (DL) model that combines architectural features from successful DL models (U-NET and Residual Networks) and learns the mapping from a single aerial imagery to a normalized Digital Surface Model (nDSM) was proposed. The model was trained on aerial images whose corresponding DSM and Digital Terrain Models (DTM) were available and was then used to infer the nDSM of images with no elevation information. The model was evaluated with a dataset covering a large area of Manchester, UK, as well as the 2018 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest LiDAR dataset. The results suggest that the proposed DL architecture is suitable for the task and surpasses other state-of-the-art DL approaches by a large margin.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (8) ◽  
pp. 2834
Author(s):  
Billur Kazaz ◽  
Subhadipto Poddar ◽  
Saeed Arabi ◽  
Michael A. Perez ◽  
Anuj Sharma ◽  
...  

Construction activities typically create large amounts of ground disturbance, which can lead to increased rates of soil erosion. Construction stormwater practices are used on active jobsites to protect downstream waterbodies from offsite sediment transport. Federal and state regulations require routine pollution prevention inspections to ensure that temporary stormwater practices are in place and performing as intended. This study addresses the existing challenges and limitations in the construction stormwater inspections and presents a unique approach for performing unmanned aerial system (UAS)-based inspections. Deep learning-based object detection principles were applied to identify and locate practices installed on active construction sites. The system integrates a post-processing stage by clustering results. The developed framework consists of data preparation with aerial inspections, model training, validation of the model, and testing for accuracy. The developed model was created from 800 aerial images and was used to detect four different types of construction stormwater practices at 100% accuracy on the Mean Average Precision (MAP) with minimal false positive detections. Results indicate that object detection could be implemented on UAS-acquired imagery as a novel approach to construction stormwater inspections and provide accurate results for site plan comparisons by rapidly detecting the quantity and location of field-installed stormwater practices.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 1651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suk-Ju Hong ◽  
Yunhyeok Han ◽  
Sang-Yeon Kim ◽  
Ah-Yeong Lee ◽  
Ghiseok Kim

Wild birds are monitored with the important objectives of identifying their habitats and estimating the size of their populations. Especially in the case of migratory bird, they are significantly recorded during specific periods of time to forecast any possible spread of animal disease such as avian influenza. This study led to the construction of deep-learning-based object-detection models with the aid of aerial photographs collected by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The dataset containing the aerial photographs includes diverse images of birds in various bird habitats and in the vicinity of lakes and on farmland. In addition, aerial images of bird decoys are captured to achieve various bird patterns and more accurate bird information. Bird detection models such as Faster Region-based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN), Region-based Fully Convolutional Network (R-FCN), Single Shot MultiBox Detector (SSD), Retinanet, and You Only Look Once (YOLO) were created and the performance of all models was estimated by comparing their computing speed and average precision. The test results show Faster R-CNN to be the most accurate and YOLO to be the fastest among the models. The combined results demonstrate that the use of deep-learning-based detection methods in combination with UAV aerial imagery is fairly suitable for bird detection in various environments.


AI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 166-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ziyang Tang ◽  
Xiang Liu ◽  
Hanlin Chen ◽  
Joseph Hupy ◽  
Baijian Yang

Unmanned Aerial Systems, hereafter referred to as UAS, are of great use in hazard events such as wildfire due to their ability to provide high-resolution video imagery over areas deemed too dangerous for manned aircraft and ground crews. This aerial perspective allows for identification of ground-based hazards such as spot fires and fire lines, and to communicate this information with fire fighting crews. Current technology relies on visual interpretation of UAS imagery, with little to no computer-assisted automatic detection. With the help of big labeled data and the significant increase of computing power, deep learning has seen great successes on object detection with fixed patterns, such as people and vehicles. However, little has been done for objects, such as spot fires, with amorphous and irregular shapes. Additional challenges arise when data are collected via UAS as high-resolution aerial images or videos; an ample solution must provide reasonable accuracy with low delays. In this paper, we examined 4K ( 3840 × 2160 ) videos collected by UAS from a controlled burn and created a set of labeled video sets to be shared for public use. We introduce a coarse-to-fine framework to auto-detect wildfires that are sparse, small, and irregularly-shaped. The coarse detector adaptively selects the sub-regions that are likely to contain the objects of interest while the fine detector passes only the details of the sub-regions, rather than the entire 4K region, for further scrutiny. The proposed two-phase learning therefore greatly reduced time overhead and is capable of maintaining high accuracy. Compared against the real-time one-stage object backbone of YoloV3, the proposed methods improved the mean average precision(mAP) from 0 . 29 to 0 . 67 , with an average inference speed of 7.44 frames per second. Limitations and future work are discussed with regard to the design and the experiment results.


2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 295
Author(s):  
Kunyong Yu ◽  
Zhenbang Hao ◽  
Christopher J. Post ◽  
Elena A. Mikhailova ◽  
Lili Lin ◽  
...  

Detecting and mapping individual trees accurately and automatically from remote sensing images is of great significance for precision forest management. Many algorithms, including classical methods and deep learning techniques, have been developed and applied for tree crown detection from remote sensing images. However, few studies have evaluated the accuracy of different individual tree detection (ITD) algorithms and their data and processing requirements. This study explored the accuracy of ITD using local maxima (LM) algorithm, marker-controlled watershed segmentation (MCWS), and Mask Region-based Convolutional Neural Networks (Mask R-CNN) in a young plantation forest with different test images. Manually delineated tree crowns from UAV imagery were used for accuracy assessment of the three methods, followed by an evaluation of the data processing and application requirements for three methods to detect individual trees. Overall, Mask R-CNN can best use the information in multi-band input images for detecting individual trees. The results showed that the Mask R-CNN model with the multi-band combination produced higher accuracy than the model with a single-band image, and the RGB band combination achieved the highest accuracy for ITD (F1 score = 94.68%). Moreover, the Mask R-CNN models with multi-band images are capable of providing higher accuracies for ITD than the LM and MCWS algorithms. The LM algorithm and MCWS algorithm also achieved promising accuracies for ITD when the canopy height model (CHM) was used as the test image (F1 score = 87.86% for LM algorithm, F1 score = 85.92% for MCWS algorithm). The LM and MCWS algorithms are easy to use and lower computer computational requirements, but they are unable to identify tree species and are limited by algorithm parameters, which need to be adjusted for each classification. It is highlighted that the application of deep learning with its end-to-end-learning approach is very efficient and capable of deriving the information from multi-layer images, but an additional training set is needed for model training, robust computer resources are required, and a large number of accurate training samples are necessary. This study provides valuable information for forestry practitioners to select an optimal approach for detecting individual trees.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1033
Author(s):  
Qiaodi Wen ◽  
Ziqi Luo ◽  
Ruitao Chen ◽  
Yifan Yang ◽  
Guofa Li

By detecting the defect location in high-resolution insulator images collected by unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) in various environments, the occurrence of power failure can be timely detected and the caused economic loss can be reduced. However, the accuracies of existing detection methods are greatly limited by the complex background interference and small target detection. To solve this problem, two deep learning methods based on Faster R-CNN (faster region-based convolutional neural network) are proposed in this paper, namely Exact R-CNN (exact region-based convolutional neural network) and CME-CNN (cascade the mask extraction and exact region-based convolutional neural network). Firstly, we proposed an Exact R-CNN based on a series of advanced techniques including FPN (feature pyramid network), cascade regression, and GIoU (generalized intersection over union). RoI Align (region of interest align) is introduced to replace RoI pooling (region of interest pooling) to address the misalignment problem, and the depthwise separable convolution and linear bottleneck are introduced to reduce the computational burden. Secondly, a new pipeline is innovatively proposed to improve the performance of insulator defect detection, namely CME-CNN. In our proposed CME-CNN, an insulator mask image is firstly generated to eliminate the complex background by using an encoder-decoder mask extraction network, and then the Exact R-CNN is used to detect the insulator defects. The experimental results show that our proposed method can effectively detect insulator defects, and its accuracy is better than the examined mainstream target detection algorithms.


Author(s):  
F. Pirotti ◽  
C. Paterno ◽  
M. Pividori

Abstract. Lidar (light detection and ranging) data are becoming more and more important in the analysis of the most relevant forest parameters. This study aims to compare the most recent segmentation methods for single trees using the ALS (Airborne Laser Scanning) point cloud and the CHM (Canopy Height Model). The methods used were the Li et al., method developed in 2012 and the Multi CHM method developed in 2015. The parameters analysed were the height and diameter for the individual trees and the volume and density for the entire forest. The efficiency of each method was verified by comparing the estimated parameters with those measured through 30 test areas. To better identify the useful parameters for the correct calibration of the algorithms, the population was divided into three layers according to the vertical structure and chronological class. From the comparison of the volumes obtained with the above methods and those calculated for the test areas, it emerges a tendency to over-segment for the Multi CHM method, while for the appropriately calibrated Li method there is a better correspondence to reality. The F-score values for the volumes obtained for the Li method are between 0.52 and 0.69 while for those obtained for the Multi CHM method are between 0.47 and 0.55. When compared with relascopic measures for each of the 48 parcels, a mean absolute difference ∼127 m3/ha and ∼141 m3/ha were found for Li2012 and MultiCHM respectively.


Author(s):  
M. N. Favorskaya ◽  
L. C. Jain

Introduction:Saliency detection is a fundamental task of computer vision. Its ultimate aim is to localize the objects of interest that grab human visual attention with respect to the rest of the image. A great variety of saliency models based on different approaches was developed since 1990s. In recent years, the saliency detection has become one of actively studied topic in the theory of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). Many original decisions using CNNs were proposed for salient object detection and, even, event detection.Purpose:A detailed survey of saliency detection methods in deep learning era allows to understand the current possibilities of CNN approach for visual analysis conducted by the human eyes’ tracking and digital image processing.Results:A survey reflects the recent advances in saliency detection using CNNs. Different models available in literature, such as static and dynamic 2D CNNs for salient object detection and 3D CNNs for salient event detection are discussed in the chronological order. It is worth noting that automatic salient event detection in durable videos became possible using the recently appeared 3D CNN combining with 2D CNN for salient audio detection. Also in this article, we have presented a short description of public image and video datasets with annotated salient objects or events, as well as the often used metrics for the results’ evaluation.Practical relevance:This survey is considered as a contribution in the study of rapidly developed deep learning methods with respect to the saliency detection in the images and videos.


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