Polyp activity estimation and monitoring for cold water corals with a deep learning approach

• Published in: 2016 ICPR 2nd Workshop on Computer Vision for Analysis of Underwater Imagery (CVAUI)
• Main Authors: Osterloff, Jonas, Nilssen, Ingunn, Järnegren, Johanna, Buhl-Mortensen, Pål, Nattkemper, Tim Wilhelm
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Lofoten; Vesterålen
• Online Access: https://pub.uni-bielefeld.de/record/2906522

Osterloff J, Nilssen I, Järnegren J, Buhl-Mortensen P, Nattkemper TW. Polyp activity estimation and monitoring for cold water corals with a deep learning approach. In: Proceedigs of CVAUI 2016 (ICPR Workshop) . 2016. Fixed underwater observatories (FUOs) equipped with a variety of sensors including cameras, allow long-term monitoring with a high temporal resolution of a limited area of interest. FUOs equipped with HD cameras enable in situ monitoring of biological activity, such as live cold-water corals on a level of detail down to individual polyps. We present a workflow which allows monitoring the activity of cold water coral polyps automatically from photos recorded at the FUO LoVe (Lofoten - Vesterålen). The workflow consists of three steps: First the manual polyp activity-level identification, carried out by three observers on a region of interest in 13 images to generate a gold standard. Second, the training of a convolutional neural network (CNN) on the gold standard to automate the polyp activity classification. Third, the computational activity classification is integrated into an algorithmic estimation of polyp activity in a region of interest. We present results obtained for an image series from April to November 2015 that shows interesting temporal behavior patterns correlating with other posterior measurements.