Freshwater diatoms identification

Diatoms are unicellular microalgae found in various aquatic environments. They are commonly used as bioindicators to assess the ecological health of freshwater bodies like rivers and lakes, as mandated by the EU Water Framework Directive (WFD). The identification of diatom species relies on examining their silica exoskeletons under a microscope using classical light microscopy. However, quantifying important morphological features, such as size and deformations, which are crucial for bioindication, is currently a laborious and time-consuming task.

To address this challenge, the use case aims to develop a prototype diatom-based bioindication service that not only identifies diatom species but also quantifies key morphological features using automatic pattern recognition algorithms on microscope images. The iMagine AI platform will be leveraged for this development.

Currently, the identification of diatom species involves subjective and time-consuming manual processes, susceptible to biases related to operator experience and image quality. By standardizing and automating this process using AI, the accuracy and efficiency can be significantly improved.

A proof of concept has already been developed using a synthetic dataset with a limited number of diatom images. The objectives of the use case include building an end-to-end pipeline for detection, classification, and quantification of diatom traits, utilizing performance metrics relevant to diatom experts. This involves creating a comprehensive and quality-controlled dataset for fine-tuning the convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and deploying the service on the iMagine AI platform.

The development roadmap encompasses establishing an annotation workflow for labeling real microscope images acquired during the project. This annotation process will expand the training sets for diatom classification (currently around 150 species) and create training sets for segmentation, which is necessary for quantifying traits like size and deformations. Concurrently, model development will focus on refining the existing end-to-end pipeline for diatom classification (using a probabilistic approach) and exploring alternative AI approaches for quantifying diatom morphological traits. Once the models are validated, they will be transferred to the iMagine platform, and the prototype service will be implemented.