Deep learning-based ecological analysis of camera trap images is impacted by training data quality and quantity

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Bevan, Peggy A., Pantazis, Omiros, Pringle, Holly, Ferreira, Guilherme Braga, Ingram, Daniel J., Madsen, Emily, Thomas, Liam, Thanet, Dol Raj, Silwal, Thakur, Rayamajhi, Santosh, Brostow, Gabriel, Mac Aodha, Oisin, Jones, Kate E.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Bevan, Peggy A.
Pantazis, Omiros
Pringle, Holly
Ferreira, Guilherme Braga
Ingram, Daniel J.
Madsen, Emily
Thomas, Liam
Thanet, Dol Raj
Silwal, Thakur
Rayamajhi, Santosh
Brostow, Gabriel
Mac Aodha, Oisin
Jones, Kate E.
author_facet Bevan, Peggy A.
Pantazis, Omiros
Pringle, Holly
Ferreira, Guilherme Braga
Ingram, Daniel J.
Madsen, Emily
Thomas, Liam
Thanet, Dol Raj
Silwal, Thakur
Rayamajhi, Santosh
Brostow, Gabriel
Mac Aodha, Oisin
Jones, Kate E.
contents Large image collections generated from camera traps offer valuable insights into species richness, occupancy, and activity patterns, significantly aiding biodiversity monitoring. However, the manual processing of these datasets is time-consuming, hindering analytical processes. To address this, deep neural networks have been widely adopted to automate image labelling, but the impact of classification error on key ecological metrics remains unclear. Here, we analyse data from camera trap collections in an African savannah (82,300 labelled images, 47 species) and an Asian sub-tropical dry forest (40,308 labelled images, 29 species) to compare ecological metrics derived from expert-generated species identifications with those generated by deep learning classification models. We specifically assess the impact of deep learning model architecture, proportion of label noise in the training data, and the size of the training dataset on three key ecological metrics: species richness, occupancy, and activity patterns. We found that predictions of species richness derived from deep neural networks closely match those calculated from expert labels and remained resilient to up to 10% noise in the training dataset (mis-labelled images) and a 50% reduction in the training dataset size. We found that our choice of deep learning model architecture (ResNet vs ConvNext-T) or depth (ResNet18, 50, 101) did not impact predicted ecological metrics. In contrast, species-specific metrics were more sensitive; less common and visually similar species were disproportionately affected by a reduction in deep neural network accuracy, with consequences for occupancy and diel activity pattern estimates. To ensure the reliability of their findings, practitioners should prioritize creating large, clean training sets and account for class imbalance across species over exploring numerous deep learning model architectures.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_14348
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep learning-based ecological analysis of camera trap images is impacted by training data quality and quantity
Bevan, Peggy A.
Pantazis, Omiros
Pringle, Holly
Ferreira, Guilherme Braga
Ingram, Daniel J.
Madsen, Emily
Thomas, Liam
Thanet, Dol Raj
Silwal, Thakur
Rayamajhi, Santosh
Brostow, Gabriel
Mac Aodha, Oisin
Jones, Kate E.
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Large image collections generated from camera traps offer valuable insights into species richness, occupancy, and activity patterns, significantly aiding biodiversity monitoring. However, the manual processing of these datasets is time-consuming, hindering analytical processes. To address this, deep neural networks have been widely adopted to automate image labelling, but the impact of classification error on key ecological metrics remains unclear. Here, we analyse data from camera trap collections in an African savannah (82,300 labelled images, 47 species) and an Asian sub-tropical dry forest (40,308 labelled images, 29 species) to compare ecological metrics derived from expert-generated species identifications with those generated by deep learning classification models. We specifically assess the impact of deep learning model architecture, proportion of label noise in the training data, and the size of the training dataset on three key ecological metrics: species richness, occupancy, and activity patterns. We found that predictions of species richness derived from deep neural networks closely match those calculated from expert labels and remained resilient to up to 10% noise in the training dataset (mis-labelled images) and a 50% reduction in the training dataset size. We found that our choice of deep learning model architecture (ResNet vs ConvNext-T) or depth (ResNet18, 50, 101) did not impact predicted ecological metrics. In contrast, species-specific metrics were more sensitive; less common and visually similar species were disproportionately affected by a reduction in deep neural network accuracy, with consequences for occupancy and diel activity pattern estimates. To ensure the reliability of their findings, practitioners should prioritize creating large, clean training sets and account for class imbalance across species over exploring numerous deep learning model architectures.
title Deep learning-based ecological analysis of camera trap images is impacted by training data quality and quantity
topic Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.14348