Elphidium – an abundant genus of foraminifera
Image:
Petter Bjørklund / SFI Visual Intelligence

Elphidium – an abundant genus of foraminifera

EurekAlert!: AI matches human experts in classifying microscopic organisms

A new study shows how deep learning can achieve human-level performance in estimating uncertainty when classifying foraminifera (News story at EurekAlert.org)

EurekAlert!: AI matches human experts in classifying microscopic organisms

A new study shows how deep learning can achieve human-level performance in estimating uncertainty when classifying foraminifera (News story at EurekAlert.org)

By Petter Bjørklund, Communications Officer at SFI Visual Intelligence

Foraminifera (forams) are shelled microorganisms that are abundant in the Earth’s seabed. Analyzing different species of forams provides important information about climate change, the state of the marine environment, and suitable areas for carbon capture and storage.

Past research has attempted to automate these classification tasks—a usually laborious and time-consuming manual process—with deep learning (DL) methods. Several studies show significant promise, but few have focused on the uncertainty of the methods’ classifications.

PhD Candidate Iver Martinsen. Photo: Petter Bjørklund / SFI Visual Intelligence

“Uncertainty estimation is crucial to avoid misclassifications that could overlook rare and ecologically significant species. It is important to develop DL methods which accurately calculate how uncertain their predictions are”, says Iver Martinsen, PhD Candidate at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and SFI Visual Intelligence (VI).

In a recently published study, Martinsen and researchers at UiT, VI, Nofima, and NSE show how deep learning can achieve human-level performance in estimating uncertainty when classifying forams. Using 260 images of forams and sediment grains, the researchers trained the DL methods to detect and classify these microscopic organisms.

Read more about the study at EurekAlert.org

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