Using convolutional neural networks to efficiently extract immense phenological data from community science images
Data files
Jan 04, 2022 version files 1.62 MB
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Model_data.zip
Abstract
Community science image libraries offer a massive, but largely untapped, source of observational data for phenological research. The iNaturalist platform offers a particularly rich archive, containing more than 49 million verifiable, georeferenced, open access images, encompassing seven continents and over 278,000 species. A critical limitation preventing scientists from taking full advantage of this rich data source is labor. Each image must be manually inspected and categorized by phenophase, which is both time-intensive and costly. Consequently, researchers may only be able to use a subset of the total number of images available in the database. While iNaturalist has the potential to yield enough data for high-resolution and spatially extensive studies, it requires more efficient tools for phenological data extraction. A promising solution is automation of the image annotation process using deep learning. Recent innovations in deep learning have made these open-source tools accessible to a general research audience. However, it is unknown whether deep learning tools can accurately and efficiently annotate phenophases in community science images. Here, we train a convolutional neural network (CNN) to annotate images of Alliaria petiolata into distinct phenophases from iNaturalist and compare the performance of the model with non-expert human annotators. We demonstrate that researchers can successfully employ deep learning techniques to extract phenological information from community science images. A CNN classified two-stage phenology (flowering and non-flowering) with 95.9% accuracy and classified four-stage phenology (vegetative, budding, flowering, and fruiting) with 86.4% accuracy. The overall accuracy of the CNN did not differ from humans (p = 0.383), although performance varied across phenophases. We found that a primary challenge of using deep learning for image annotation was not related to the model itself, but instead in the quality of the community science images. Up to 4% of A. petiolata images in iNaturalist were taken from an improper distance, were physically manipulated, or were digitally altered, which limited both human and machine annotators in accurately classifying phenology. Thus, we provide a list of photography guidelines that could be included in community science platforms to inform community scientists in the best practices for creating images that facilitate phenological analysis.
Methods
Creating a training and validation image set
We downloaded 40,761 research-grade observations of A. petiolata from iNaturalist, ranging from 1995 to 2020. Observations on the iNaturalist platform are considered “research-grade if the observation is verifiable (includes image), includes the date and location observed, is growing wild (i.e. not cultivated), and at least two-thirds of community users agree on the species identification. From this dataset, we used a subset of images for model training. The total number of observations in the iNaturalist dataset are heavily skewed towards more recent years. Less than 5% of the images we downloaded (n=1,790) were uploaded between 1995-2016, while over 50% of the images were uploaded in 2020. To mitigate temporal bias, we used all available images between the years 1995 and 2016 and we randomly selected images uploaded between 2017-2020. We restricted the number of randomly-selected images in 2020 by capping the number of 2020 images to approximately the number of 2019 observations in the training set. The annotated observation records are available in the supplement (supplementary data sheet 1). The majority of the unprocessed records (those which hold a CC-BY-NC license) are also available on GBIF.org (2021).
One of us (R. Reeb) annotated the phenology of training and validation set images using two different classification schemes: two-stage (non-flowering, flowering) and four-stage (vegetative, budding, flowering, fruiting). For the two-stage scheme, we classified 12,277 images and designated images as ‘flowering’ if there was one or more open flowers on the plant. All other images were classified as non-flowering. For the four-stage scheme, we classified 12,758 images. We classified images as ‘vegetative’ if no reproductive parts were present, ‘budding’ if one or more unopened flower buds were present, ‘flowering’ if at least one opened flower was present, and ‘fruiting’ if at least one fully-formed fruit was present (with no remaining flower petals attached at the base). Phenology categories were discrete; if there was more than one type of reproductive organ on the plant, the image was labeled based on the latest phenophase (e.g. if both flowers and fruits were present, the image was classified as fruiting).
For both classification schemes, we only included images in the model training and validation dataset if the image contained one or more plants with clearly visible reproductive parts were clear and we could exclude the possibility of a later phenophase. We removed 1.6% of images from the two-stage dataset that did not meet this requirement, leaving us with a total of 12,077 images, and 4.0% of the images from the four-stage leaving us with a total of 12,237 images. We then split the two-stage and four-stage datasets into a model training dataset (80% of each dataset) and a validation dataset (20% of each dataset).
Training a two-stage and four-stage CNN
We adapted techniques from studies applying machine learning to herbarium specimens for use with community science images (Lorieul et al. 2019; Pearson et al. 2020). We used transfer learning to speed up training of the model and reduce the size requirements for our labeled dataset. This approach uses a model that has been pre-trained using a large dataset and so is already competent at basic tasks such as detecting lines and shapes in images. We trained a neural network (ResNet-18) using the Pytorch machine learning library (Psake et al. 2019) within Python. We chose the ResNet-18 neural network because it had fewer convolutional layers and thus was less computationally intensive than pre-trained neural networks with more layers. In early testing we reached desired accuracy with the two-stage model using ResNet-18. ResNet-18 was pre-trained using the ImageNet dataset, which has 1,281,167 images for training (Deng et al. 2009). We utilized default parameters for batch size (4), learning rate (0.001), optimizer (stochastic gradient descent), and loss function (cross entropy loss). Because this led to satisfactory performance, we did not further investigate hyperparameters.
Because the ImageNet dataset has 1,000 classes while our data was labeled with either 2 or 4 classes, we replaced the final fully-connected layer of the ResNet-18 architecture with fully-connected layers containing an output size of 2 for the 2-class problem and 4 for the 4-class problem. We resized and cropped the images to fit ResNet’s input size of 224x224 pixels and normalized the distribution of the RGB values in each image to a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one, to simplify model calculations. During training, the CNN makes predictions on the labeled data from the training set and calculates a loss parameter that quantifies the model’s inaccuracy. The slope of the loss in relation to model parameters is found and then the model parameters are updated to minimize the loss value. After this training step, model performance is estimated by making predictions on the validation dataset. The model is not updated during this process, so that the validation data remains ‘unseen’ by the model (Rawat and Wang 2017; Tetko et al. 1995). This cycle is repeated until the desired level of accuracy is reached. We trained our model for 25 of these cycles, or epochs. We stopped training at 25 epochs to prevent overfitting, where the model becomes trained too specifically for the training images and begins to lose accuracy on images in the validation dataset (Tetko et al. 1995).
We evaluated model accuracy and created confusion matrices using the model’s predictions on the labeled validation data. This allowed us to evaluate the model’s accuracy and which specific categories are the most difficult for the model to distinguish. For using the model to make phenology predictions on the full, 40,761 image dataset, we created a custom dataloader function in Pytorch using the Custom Dataset function, which would allow for loading images listed in a csv and passing them through the model associated with unique image IDs.
Hardware information
Model training was conducted using a personal laptop (Ryzen 5 3500U cpu and 8 GB of memory) and a desktop computer (Ryzen 5 3600 cpu, NVIDIA RTX 3070 GPU and 16 GB of memory).
Comparing CNN accuracy to human annotation accuracy
We compared the accuracy of the trained CNN to the accuracy of seven inexperienced human scorers annotating a random subsample of 250 images from the full, 40,761 image dataset. An expert annotator (R. Reeb, who has over a year’s experience in annotating A. petiolata phenology) first classified the subsample images using the four-stage phenology classification scheme (vegetative, budding, flowering, fruiting). Nine images could not be classified for phenology and were removed. Next, seven non-expert annotators classified the 241 subsample images using an identical protocol. This group represented a variety of different levels of familiarity with A. petiolata phenology, ranging from no research experience to extensive research experience (two or more years working with this species). However, no one in the group had substantial experience classifying community science images and all were naïve to the four-stage phenology scoring protocol. The trained CNN was also used to classify the subsample images. We compared human annotation accuracy in each phenophase to the accuracy of the CNN using students t-tests. The model and human annotated subsample data can be found in the supplement (supplementary data sheet 2). This research is exempt from University of Pittsburgh IRB approval according to the University’s Exempt Criteria 45 CFR 46.104(d)(2).
Unclassifiable images
Within the four-stage training and validation dataset, we removed 4% of plant images that could not be classified into a phenological stage. To quantitatively assess the cause of unclassifiable images, the experienced annotator (R.Reeb) labeled these images in one of six categories: 1) camera distance (camera was too far or too close to the plant to classify phenology), 2) physical manipulation (the plant was no longer rooted in the ground), 3) digital manipulation (the image was digitally altered or was copied from a secondary source), 4) senesced plant (no remaining leaves), 5) misidentified species (image did not contain A. petiolata), and 6) duplicate entry (an image had been logged two or more times by the same user).