f Maize: A Seamless Image Filtering and Deep Transfer EfficientNet-b0 Model for Sub-Classifying Fungi Species Infecting Zea mays Leaves

• Published in: Journal of advanced computational intelligence and intelligent informatics 2022-11, Vol.26 (6), p.914-921
• Main Authors: Alejandrino, Jonnel D., II, Ronnie S. Concepcion, Sybingco, Edwin, Palconit, Maria Gemel B., Bautista, Mary Grace Ann C., Bandala, Argel A., Dadios, Elmer P.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1343-0130; 1883-8014
• DOI: 10.20965/jaciii.2022.p0914

Identification of fungi infecting Zea mays leaves and sub-classifying them to have correct course management in the earlier stages is lucrative. To develop a nondestructive and low-cost classification model of corn leaves infected by Setosphaeria turcica (ST), Cercospora zeae-maydis (CZM), and Puccinia sorghi (PS) fungi using image filtering and transfer learning model. Corn leaf images were categorized based on fungal-infection and stored in an image library. All images were then processed to show different intensities and then utilized to filter the images. An original RGB-based CNN model has been compared with selected pre-trained models of VGG16 and EfficientNet-b0 with inputs of both unfiltered and filtered RGB images. Results showed that the EfficientNet-b0 with filtered images model ( f Maize) exhibited the highest accuracy of 97.63%, sensitivity of 97.99%, specificity of 97.38, quality index of 97.68%, and F-score of 96.48%. Consequently, the experimental results revealed that deep transfer learning models fed with filtered images produced higher accuracy than models that simply employed RGB images. Thus, transfer learning was proven to be a valuable tool in enhancing CNN image classification accuracy.