Automatic System for Zebrafish Counting in Fish Facility Tanks

In this project we propose a computer vision method, based on background subtraction, to estimate the number of zebrafish inside a tank. We addressed questions related to the best choice of parameters to run the algorithm, namely the threshold blob area for fish detection and the reference area from which a blob area in a threshed frame may be considered as one or multiple fish. Empirical results obtained after several tests show that the method can successfully estimate, within a margin of error, the number of zebrafish (fries or adults) inside fish tanks proving that adaptive background subtraction is extremely effective for blob isolation and fish counting.

[1]  Z. Zivkovic Improved adaptive Gaussian mixture model for background subtraction , 2004, ICPR 2004.

[2]  J. N. Fabic,et al.  Fish population estimation and species classification from underwater video sequences using blob counting and shape analysis , 2013, 2013 IEEE International Underwater Technology Symposium (UT).

[3]  Robert B. Fisher,et al.  Detecting, Tracking and Counting Fish in Low Quality Unconstrained Underwater Videos , 2008, VISAPP.

[4]  Ming-Kuei Hu,et al.  Visual pattern recognition by moment invariants , 1962, IRE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[5]  Ferdinand van der Heijden,et al.  Efficient adaptive density estimation per image pixel for the task of background subtraction , 2006, Pattern Recognit. Lett..

[6]  Abdul Rahman Ramli,et al.  Fingerprint Recognition Using Zernike Moments , 2007, Int. Arab J. Inf. Technol..

[7]  Allan V. Kalueff,et al.  Understanding behavioral and physiological phenotypes of stress and anxiety in zebrafish , 2009, Behavioural Brain Research.

[8]  B. K. Liew,et al.  Automated Fish Counting Using Image Processing , 2009, 2009 International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Software Engineering.

[9]  Robert B. Fisher,et al.  A research tool for long-term and continuous analysis of fish assemblage in coral-reefs using underwater camera footage , 2014, Ecol. Informatics.

[10]  Sandra Martins,et al.  Toward an Integrated Zebrafish Health Management Program Supporting Cancer and Neuroscience Research. , 2016, Zebrafish.

[11]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Computer Vision - Algorithms and Applications , 2011, Texts in Computer Science.